The Swiss government said it welcomed the launch of the Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative by the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, aimed at helping developing countries to recover assets stolen by corrupt leaders, to invest them in effective development programmes and to combat safe havens internationally.

The initiative, said the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, corresponds with Switzerland’s view that progress in the freezing, restitution and use of stolen or embezzled assets demands joint action at the international level. Switzerland pledged to contribute its experience in this area and to collaborate with the World Bank.

Switzerland, it said, has every interest in preventing the abuse of its financial centre as a result of the presence of assets of criminal origin. It has taken effective measures to prevent, uncover, freeze and return such assets.

But it is of the view that national measures alone do not solve the problem of the existence of illicit funds of politically exposed persons. This is why it has always endorsed the international approach. The so-called Lausanne Process, initiated by Switzerland in 2001, was designed to promote the search for specific approaches to solving this problem through dialogue between states. Switzerland said it regarded the StAR initiative as an important enrichment to this essential international debate.

Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, during the official launch of the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative on Monday said: "This Initiative will foster much needed cooperation between developed and developing countries and between the public and private sectors to ensure that looted assets are returned to their rightful owners."

According to the document, Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative: Challenges, Opportunities, and Action Plan, the cross-border flow of the global proceeds from criminal activities, corruption, and tax evasion is estimated at between $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion per year.

A quarter of the GDP of African states is estimated to be lost to corruption every year, amounting to $148 billion, but the problem is seen in all continents. Corrupt money associated with bribes received by public officials from developing and transition countries is conservatively estimated at $20 billion to $40 billion per year—a figure equivalent to 20 to 40 per cent of flows of official development assistance.

Even a portion of recovered assets, said the document, could provide much-needed funding for social programmes or badly needed infrastructure.

In order to prevent and resolve the problem of stolen assets, StAR operates on the premise that both developed and developing countries must work in partnership. While developing countries need to improve governance and accountability, developed nations should also stop providing a safe heaven for stolen proceeds.

StAR calls for the ratification by all countries of the UN Convention against Corruption. Currently only half of the OECD member states have done so and, of the G-8 countries, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan have yet to ratify. Meanwhile, only 13 of the 54 jurisdictions classified by the IMF as offshore financial centres have ratified the convention.

In addition, it says, a collective effort with multilateral and bilateral agencies, as well as with civil society and the private sector, is essential.

Concrete actions of the StAR Initiative include building institutional capacity in developing countries for requesting technical assistance to strengthen their prosecuting agencies and bring their laws to be in compliance with the Convention and assisting the asset recovery process of developing countries by providing them loans or grants to finance the start up costs, provide advice on hiring legal counsel, and facilitate cooperation between countries.

StAR also calls for the integrity of financial markets to be strengthened. This will include bringing financial centres into compliance with anti-money laundering legislation that would detect and deter laundering of illicit proceeds and strengthen the capacity of financial intelligence units around the world to enhance cooperation between them.

Finally, it calls the use of recovered assets to be monitored so that repatriated funds are used for development purposes, such as social programmes, better education and infrastructure.

In order to strengthen the collective effort to prevent and tackle the problem of stolen assets, monitor progress and provide advice, the initiative will be under the guidance of “friends of StAR”, a group composed of influential individuals from developed and developing countries.

The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world, and StAR is a key component of the institution's Governance and Anti-Corruption Strategy. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime is a leader in the fight against illicit drugs and international crime. Its mandate is to assist member states in their struggle against illicit drugs, crime and terrorism.

UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa, described the StAR Initiative as a "turning point in the global fight against corruption". He said: ”From now on it should be harder for kleptocrats to steal the public's money, and easier for the public to get its money back."