Two excellent reports have been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction: Shady Shipping: Understanding Trade-Based Money Laundering, and Asset Recovery in Eurasia: Repatriation or Repay the Patron? They are briefing reports produced by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Shady Shipping: Understanding Trade-Based Money Laundering - Paul Massaro, Policy Advisor, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, presided over the hearing and commented: I'd like to talk about the threat posed by globalized corruption and kleptocracy to the United States. I think that it comes as no surprise to many people in this room that authoritarian kleptocrats are exploiting the global financial system to hide their ill-gotten gains on our shores and those of our allies, providing protection for their stolen assets and a vector of influence into our political systems. Once established, these kleptocrats set about hollowing out the rule of law institutions that we hold so dear to better serve their preferences. Much remains to be done to close the loopholes that enable this malign influence, though Congress is taking action. And I'd like to point out one piece of action recently taken by House Financial Services with the passage of the Bank Secrecy Act amendment, that a study in strategy on Trade-Based Money Laundering [TMBL] has come out and will hopefully be passed by Congress to be completed by the executive branch. So generally at the Helsinki Commission we try to work on some of the issues that others aren't looking at, try to think about emerging issues and think around the corner. And that's how we came to working on TBML. Of course, with TBML, as John I'm sure will tell you, that the issue's already arrived in many ways. It's sort of the USG [U.S. Government] response that hasn't necessarily arrived in the way that it has to.

Asset Recovery in Eurasia: Repatriation or Repay the Patron? - Also presided over by Paul Massaro: Asset recovery, or the process of repatriating funds previously stolen by corrupt officials, is one of the major facets of anticorruption work. Ideally, we would have a system through which assets recovered were directly returned to the people from whom they were stolen. These people would then directly benefit from the funds that were denied them by their corrupt leaders, and there would be a greater understanding of the benefits of the rule of law internationally. Unfortunately, there are big question marks around this process. Rather than the funds going back to benefit the people from whom they were stolen, these assets may re-enter the cycle of corruption, to be stolen once again by corrupt leaders. Instead of providing inspiration and impetus for the rule of law globally, this cycle of steal/recover, steal/recover undermines the rules of law and gives the impression that the whole system is a charade. It is imperative that this be avoided. But that is easier said than done with the anonymous financial architecture that currently exists in the West and enablers who assist transnational kleptocrats in their creative accounting. Clearly, there's more that must be done. There is an opening here for a foreign policy breakthrough if Western jurisdictions can, instead of hiding money, recover those funds and see them used in visible and constructive ways in the jurisdictions from which they were stolen. Rather than being viewed as a black hole for ill-gotten gains, the rule of law states of the West have the opportunity to be seen as defenders of the victims of corruption globally if they can develop creative methods to make those funds work for the...