Returning Stolen Wealth Can Enable Theft Twice -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

These headlines never fail to bring solidarity in the international community, delighting each and every actor involved whenever one more such article professing stolen assets returning home appears. Ministers ink deals, diplomats declare millions recovered and governments point to bank transfers like trophies for a job well done

However, repatriation without accountability is funding the next plunder.

The assets are from corruption, money laundering, trafficking and other crimes. In property, trust or shell company ownership before than being seized in another nation and effectively frozen from states controlled by some sort of complicity – banks who deal with black money. But the most wronged, patients deprived of medicine; trafficking survivors denied reparations and communities without schools, water or decent homes often have little say in how recovered wealth is spent.

This is the accountability gap: international law is good on tracking, freezing, confiscating and transferring assets; but once money lands in the requesting state, it tends to get dangerously vague.

This gap manifests between financial centers with secretive laws that hold illicit wealth and countries pounding their fists demanding the return of that wealth. It is wide at the opening when part of secret government-government negotiations, but open it wider yet, where assets go into general revenues without dedicated accounts, identifiable beneficiaries or measurable objectives. With fragmented institutions, prosecutors can then claim success whilst victim compensation bodies fall unfunded.

Why does this persist? Because both parties have a stake in diluted accountability. Technically, requests for states can cover situations of excessive delays, high management costs and political selectivity. As for recipient governments, they can claim sovereignty and avoid scrutiny all while funneling the money through murky procurement systems. Each government blames the other; neither takes responsibility from confiscation to ultimate beneficiary.

There is both possibility and peril in the arrangements of the past. Monitored social-protection mechanisms, including World Bank involvement, were used in returning assets stolen by Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s former ruler. In an independently designed program, Kazakhstan’s BOTA Foundation aimed use contested assets to benefit under privileged children. The Equatorial Guinea case highlighted the flow of confiscated proceeds through third parties for public-benefit purposes rather than simply transferring funds to state authorities, as had often been done in the past(49).

These models are mere imperfect templates. Top-down initiatives are also paternalist, erode local capacity and reproduce Global North imperialism. But sovereignty cannot represent unrestricted governmental license to lose stolen wealth a second time. The solution is international shared, rights-based accountability—not unconditional transfer or perpetual custodial care abroad.

Five reforms are essential.

First, the publication of all return agreements requires immediate disclosure (recorded gross value, legal status, deductibles, conditions for a fee center and rules). Exceptions to confidentiality must be narrow, justified and reviewable.

Second, returned or recovered money needs to go into segregated accounts or permanent codes in a budget. Every entity should be traced from seizure to contracting, payment and final beneficiary in public digital dashboards. You have to reveal contractors and subcontractors as well as beneficial owners.

Third, there has to be a shift from repatriation of land by governments to instead giving reparations. Prior to the allocation of violent loss, independent assessments must identify both individual and collective institutional victims. Funds must be an addition to ordinary public budgets, never a substitution for them and directed at realizable harms causally connected to the conduct underlying crime.

Fourth, provide formal monitoring rights and safeguard communities affected by climate change, journalists, national human-rights institutions and civil-society organizations from retaliation including through timely information. Joining in later after spending decisions are set is theatre.

Lastly, independent financial, procurement and human-rights audits should ascertain not only whether money was disbursed, but whether it provided health, education, security, equality and dignity. At the same time, industry bodies can be empowered to freeze dubious payments, investigate misuse of funds, recover anything that was misused and direct corrective actions.

Its not the money transfer recipient that ultimately matters! It is who receives justice.

If returned wealth disappears into some other corrupt system, then repatriation is laundering with a side of diplomatic signatures.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Managing Partner Law Firm Victorious Indonesia