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This volume provides an analytical framework and operational approaches needed for the implementation of results-based accountability. The volume makes a major contribution to the literature on public management and evaluation. Major subject areas covered in this book include: performance based accountability, e-government, legal and institutional framework to hold government to account; fighting corruption; external accountability and the role of supreme audit institutions on detecting fraud and corruption.

More than 1 billion people around the world live without access to safe, potable water, in part because of poor governance and corruption. Illegal connections and substantial losses caused by deferred maintenance have eroded the revenues of water utilities, leading to a downward spiral in performance. Embezzlement of funds, bribes for access to illegal water connections, manipulation of meter counters, and collusion in public contracts add to the litany of corrupt practices. 'Improving Transparency, Integrity, and Accountability in Water Supply and Sanitation' is a useful tool for diagnosing, analyzing, and remedying systemic corruption in the water supply and sanitation sectors. It will serve as a practical guide for governments; utility regulators, managers, and staff; civil society organizations; contractors; and citizens in their quest for a model of service provision that responds to the pressing needs of people in the developing world. The book aims to increase the involvement of civil society by engaging all stakeholders in setting priorities and monitoring performance; help water and sanitation delivery contribute to poverty reduction by increasing the service quality and coverage provided by service delivery organizations to poorer communities on an equitable basis; provide a tool that promotes the financial sustainability of service delivery organizations, thus building stakeholders' confidence in those institutions' ability to expand and improve service; and raise ethical standards among all stakeholders, especially service delivery organizations, thereby instilling a sense of public service in these organizations.

In most countries, parliament has the constitutional mandate to both oversee government and to hold government to account; often, audit institutions, ombuds and anti-corruption agencies report to parliament, as a means of ensuring both their independence from government and reinforcing parliament's position at the apex of accountability.

Corruption and thefts of public assets harm a diffuse set of victims, weakens confidence in public institutions, damages the private investment climate, and threatens the foundations of the society as a whole. In developing countries with scarce public resources, the cost of corruption is an impediment to development: developing countries lose between US$20 to US$40 billion each year through bribery, misappropriation of funds, and other corrupt practices. Corruption is by no means a \"victimless crime.\" This study aims to explore the standing of States and Government entities as victims and the possible recourse to private actions to redress public wrongs. States and Government entities may act as private litigants and bring civil suits to recover assets lost to corruption. The goal of this work is to promote knowledge and understanding as well as to increase the use of civil remedies and private lawsuits to recover stolen assets in the context of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) offences. The UNCAC, the global standard for the fight against corruption, does not contain a legal definition of corruption itself but lists an array of offences, including public and private sector bribery and the embezzlement of public and private sector funds. The study will mainly focus on these two types of corruption, namely bribery and embezzlement of funds. This study is not intended in any way to minimize the importance of criminal proceedings and confiscation in addressing acts of corruption. Rather, it will show that civil law remedies can effectively complement criminal penalties by attacking the economic base of corrupt activities both in the public and the private sectors. In fact, given the magnitude of the challenges, all avenues of asset recovery, be they criminal or civil, should be explored simultaneously in order to tackle corruption from each and every angle and achieve the goals of deterrence and enforcement. Hence, while criminal law expresses society's disapproval of the corrupt acts and aims at dissuasion, punishment, and confiscation of illicit proceeds, civil law focuses on victims' interests and aims at compensation and restitution. These procedures may occur sometimes in parallel, sometimes sequentially. An effective response to corruption very often requires concomitant use of both criminal and civil law remedies to achieve the desired result.

This report, the puppet masters, deals with the corporate and financial structures that form the building blocks of hidden money trails. In particular, it focuses on the ease with which corrupt actors hide their interests behind a corporate veil and the difficulties investigators face in trying to lift that veil. It serves as a powerful reminder that recovering the proceeds of corruption is a collective responsibility that involves both the public and private sector. Law enforcement and prosecution cannot go after stolen assets, confiscate and then return them if they are hidden behind the corporate veil. All financial centers and developed countries have committed, through the UN Convention against Corruption and international anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism standards, to improving the transparency of legal entities and other arrangements. This report provides evidence of how far we still have to go to make these commitments a reality. Narrowing the gap between stated commitments and practice on the ground has a direct impact on actual recovery of assets. Des avoirs volés chiffrés en milliards de dollars, des circuits financiers complexes, des empilements de sociétés-écrans et autres structures juridiques factices . . . Tels sont les subterfuges caractérisant les affaires de corruption derrière lesquels se cache le bénéficiaire effectif, marionnettiste et bénéficiaire de ces systèmes. Parvenir à relier le bénéficiaire effectif aux produits de la corruption est difficile. Doté de ressources et moyens considérables, le bénéficiaire effectif exploite à son profit des structures transnationales opaques et conserve ainsi toujours une longueur d’avance. La maiorité des dossiers de grande corruption ont en commun le fait qu’ils s’appuient sur des structures juridiques, comme les sociétés, les fondations ou les trusts pour dissimuler la propriété et le contrôle de l’argent sale. Les Marionnettistes: Comment dissimuler les biens mal acquis derrière des structures juridiques, et que faire pour l’empêcher se focalise précisément sur l’utilisation de ces structures juridiques. Cette étude s’appuie sur la jurisprudence, sur des entretiens réalisés avec des enquêteurs, des représentants des registres des sociétés et des institutions financières, ainsi que sur un exercice de testing apportant des preuves factuelles de comportements délictueux. Cette approche permet ainsi de saisir la nature du problème et permettre d’élaborer des recommandations concrètes, de manière à faciliter le processus d’enquête en révélant la complexité des structures juridiques. Ce rapport repose sur une solide argumentation, menée étape par étape, conçue de manière à fournir des recommandations concrètes, applicables et bien étayées. Son objectif est d’aider les décideurs à mettre en œuvre des législations et réglementations nationales ainsi que des standards internationaux. Cette analyse apporte également des informations pratiques aux praticiens chargés d’enquêter sur les agents publics corrompus, ainsi qu’aux chercheurs spécialistes des crimes financiers.

This book chronicles the anticorruption reforms that have transformed public service in Georgia since the Rose Revolution in late 2003. The focus is on the 'how' behind successful reforms of selected public services. This book tries to answer some of these questions. It is based largely on data and informed by interviews with past and current high-ranking government officials who provide insights from within government on the challenges and solutions, the decisions, and the trade-offs considered. This book does not assess Georgia's overall reforms since the rose revolution. It does not address efforts toward democratization, which were a key part of the rose revolution. The book focuses on how the state was able to root out corruption and eliminate red tape in selected public services. It does not analyze areas in which government efforts are still continuing or may have fallen short. Nor does it suggest any causality between anticorruption reforms and growth or social outcomes. From the case studies on each of these efforts, the book identifies a set of common factors that led to the success of the reforms.

The guide is organized into three major parts: Part A first provides an overview of the problem of stolen assets and the problem of recovering the assets once they are transferred abroad. Second, it describes how the international community has taken steps to respond to the problem through United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative. UNCAC introduced a new framework to facilitate the tracing, freezing, seizing, forfeiture, and return of assets stolen through corrupt practices and hidden in foreign jurisdictions. The StAR Initiative developed an action plan to support the domestication and implementation of asset recovery provisions under UNCAC, to facilitate countries' efforts to recover stolen assets that have been hidden in foreign jurisdictions, and ultimately, to help deter such flows and eliminate safe havens for hiding corruption proceeds. Third and finally, Part A introduces non-conviction based (NCB) asset forfeiture as one of the critical tools to combat corruption, describing the situations when it is useful, how it differs from criminal forfeiture, its usefulness in civil and common law jurisdictions, and the support it has gained internationally. Part B contains the 36 key concepts. The concepts have been grouped together by topic area, including prime imperatives, definitions of assets and offenses subject to NCB asset forfeiture, measures for investigation and preservation of assets, procedural and evidentiary concepts, determining parties and ensuring proper notice, judgment proceedings, organizational considerations and asset management, and international cooperation and asset recovery. The concepts are illustrated through examples from cases and excerpts from different jurisdictions' NCB asset forfeiture legislation. Part C contains a number of special contributions written by individual practitioners. The contributions focus on the general practice of NCB asset forfeiture and international cooperation in specific jurisdictions, namely Colombia, Guernsey, Ireland, Kuwait, Switzerland, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. In addition, some contributions illustrate a selection of NCB asset forfeiture practices, such as asset management, delegating certain roles to the executive branch, and pursuing forfeiture based on illicit enrichment. Le vol d’avoirs publics est un problème de développement de grande ampleur. On estime que le flux transfrontalier total provenant des activités criminelles, de la corruption et de la fraude fiscale, représente entre 1 et 1.6 trillion de dollars par an. Les dommages résultant de ces vols comprennent également la dégradation et la défiance envers les institutions publiques, l’affaiblissement du climat de confiance des investisseurs privés et la corruption des services sociaux en charges des programmes d’assistance de santé et d’éducation. Qu’ils soient publics ou privés, une fois transférés à l’étranger, ces fonds volés sont difficilement récupérables. Les pays en voie de développement se heurtent à de sérieux obstacles, liés à l’absence de lois sur la confiscation d’avoirs sans condamnation (CSC), de moyens d’investigations, de pouvoir judiciaire et de ressources financières inadéquates. La CSC est un outil primordial pour la restitution du produit et des moyens de la corruption. C’est un mécanisme juridique prévoyant la contrainte, la saisie et la confiscation d’avoirs volés, sans la nécessité d’une condamnation pénale. Un nombre croissant de systèmes législatifs nationaux ont institué des règles encadrant la CSC, et de tels cadres juridiques ont été recommandés par nombre d’organisations tant au niveau national que multilatéral. Cet intérêt croissant pour les lois sur la CSC rend nécessaire la mise au point d’un outil pratique pour les systèmes judiciaires envisageant de développer une telle réglementation. Ce livre est conçu comme un outil pratique pour aider les États à récupérer leurs avoirs volés. C’est le premier guide traitant de la confiscation de biens selon le principe des lois sans condamnation CSC et la première publication de synthèse dans le cadre de « l’Initiative pour la Restitution d’Avoirs Volés (StAR) ». Le guide identifie 36 concepts clés (légaux et opérationnels) que des lois sur la CSC devraient englober afin d’être efficaces dans la Restitution d’avoirs volés.

Although the Latin American region's growth rates are at a three decade high, they have been historically disappointing in relative terms, which cannot be dissociated from the microeconomic environment in which firms operate. Policy makers may need to complement their focus on macroeconomic stability with an increased emphasis on microeconomic reforms. By providing empirical evidence linking actual firm performance to shortcomings in Latin America's investment climate, the book discusses policies that could have a significant impact on firm productivity by improving the environment in which firms invest and operate.