Good morning, everybody. Welcome. Im a Senior Advisor here at the csis. Its good to see lots of Friendly Faces in the audience. For those of you new to the headquarters, i know some of our panelists, this is their inaugural visit, welcome. After the session, we will be having a reception. We hope you can join us. Welcome, again. We are being joined via wide stream on internet as well as cspan. Keep in mind youre on tv as well as we are. But were very excited to not only be hosting this pooanel entitled assets. I could not imagine a better set of experts to speak to the range of past, current and future i e issues and challenges. Let me set the stage, in part, because weve gathered about two years ago. In what was happening systemically in terms of dealing with highend corruption. These issues are not new, of course. News a these are issues and regimes that will be with us for a number of years. What we want to do today is talk about an International Community in the u. S. On dealing wi
Week of november and secondly, what you see the role of switzerland not just for purposes of dealing with what may be in the Banking System and the action in this space. Where things are headed in the perspective. The form on recovery. Again, thats something that we do in cooperation with the world bank, etc. We do expect the specific result. We provide the forum to look back at the last year and on the ses us, and the tunesian case, probably they will soon be a return and a lot of the funds probably not compared with the and the case of egypt given the countrys development. Again, they are very encouraging signs and increased cooperation and we could then also go into a restitution mode soon. I think that will be the topic at the contrary. As for switzerlands role, we have received a mandate, so to speak and the un conference against the corruption. I think all of us come to realize that if you have this great instrument and its not staying put, i will give you an example. If you have
Something that is slapped together. So its being put together by people right there. I dont get the sense that this is being imported. To the extent that im wrong that this is something more sophisticated my sense is this has happened some time ago. Once the oil is refined you have testified that the assad regime is purchasing some of the oil. Some of it is being smuggled into the southern regions of turkey where you said the price of gasoline is higher than we would expect here. If you are purchasing barrels of oil at 30 or so a barrel you have reason to know this may be illicit oil. Are we doing enough as treasury of the United States to determine who the middle men are that are purchasing oil at 30 a barrel and make sure we are following that money into what accounts . That is exactly what they are doing, identifying the middle men. That is what i discussed more explicitly in my testimony. There is also a significant more diplomatic push to get the turks to do more in southern turke
I think breaking down those boundaries between different parts of government is very much something that weve seen and its translated into legislative action as well. Asset freezing recall, legislation that many countries have adopted. So a holding measure. E. U. Has done that. Switzerland has done that. Just after arab spring. A list of these persons, freeze their assets now. It is not a judicial freeze in the context of judicial action. It is an administrative freeze giving the countries time to prepare their judicial action. I think that sort of innovative legislation is happening. The civil forfeiture legislation that i think in america has been around for a very long time but in many other countries is still relatively new. You see that i wouldnt say proliferating but you see countries taking up those sort of legislations, so what we call nonconviction based legislation where you connect the asset to a crime. Typically on the balance of probabilities. Wont go into too many details
Passed a landmark bylaw recognizing samesex partnerships as the equivalent of marriage. Families of japanese citizens abducted to north korea in the 1970s and 80s are still hoping to learn about the fates of their loved ones. Officials in pyongyang pledged last may to launch a new investigation into what happened to them. But they failed to deliver reports on their progress. So japanese leaders have decided to extend economic sanctions for two more years. Cabinet ministers approved the extension on tuesday. The sanctions had been set to expire in two weeks. Translator japan will use pressure and dialogue to resolve the abduction issue, and other pending issues related to north korea. Reporter japanese officials have named 17 people who were abducted by north korean agents. But the victims families and police say the real number may reach into the hundred. Officials in tokyo first imposed the sanctions in 2006. They prohibit north korea from engaging in trade with japan. This isnt the f