Environmental Crime: Targeting the Proceeds of Corruption

Alexandria Reid, Rob Parry-Jones, Tom Keatinge, ‘Targeting corruption and its proceeds: Why we should mainstream an anti-corruption perspective into “follow the money” approaches to natural resource crime’, Targeting Natural Resource Corruption (USAID), October 2020.

Several UN General Assembly Resolutions advocate for a “follow the money” approach to the investigation of natural resource crimes and networks, but the corruption that facilitates these crimes is not often included in programs and initiatives that apply financial investigations to environmental crime.

Technical capacity is not the only constraint to “following the money” in corruption-related environmental crime investigations. Powerful corrupt actors may obstruct financial investigations, or prevailing political dynamics within or outside institutions may create disincentives for uncovering corruption, such as fear of repercussions.

This Topic Brief identifies financial responses to environmental corruption from a crime prevention, detection and enforcement perspective. Download the PDF here.

Commissioned by the USAID project Targeting Natural Resource Corruption (TNRC).