US Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the US intends to seize money stolen by corrupt African leaders and invested in the US. Speaking at the African Union meeting in Kampala over the weekend, Mr Holder said that a team of prosecutors has been assembled for the “Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative”, which is designed to detect large-scale corruption, recover public money, and redirect it to its proper use.
It remains to be seen whether any benefits will come out of this new initiative. In 2004 the Meeting of G8 Justice and Home Affairs Ministers made a “G8 Ministerial Declaration on Recovering Proceeds of Corruption”, in which the G8 nations pledged to establish accelerated response teams, asset recovery case co-ordination, and asset recovery workshops. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime runs an Asset Recovery Initiative. I suspect that it is easier to run an initiative than it is to recover stolen assets.
Many of the major perpetrators of corruption are known, and the approximate extent of their looting and locations of their stolen assets are also known. $100 billion is said to have been embezzled from Nigeria. Mobutu Sese Seko is said to have embezzled $5 billion from Zaire. $3 to $4 billion is said to have been looted from Kenya, and a widely published leaked investigation report reveals where much of that money is.