Financial Transparency Coalition

Task Force member Global Witness's Rosie Sharp wrote the following op-ed in The Guardian on Monday. She expanded on the argument that she wrote about on this blog earlier this week, about the implications of the Guardian, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the BBC's Panorama programme investigations into the nominee shareholders that make anonymous shell companies possible.

The G8 have just released an ambitious and comprehensive asset recovery action plan as part of the Deauville Partnership with Arab Countries in Transition. It is timely and necessary to reinforce the momentum behind stolen asset recovery processes. The first step by G8 countries was to freeze the accounts of the authoritarian leaders Mubarak, Ben Aliand Gaddafi after their fall from power last year, based on the allegation that the assets held had been illicitly acquired from state coffers. However, there has been too little progress made in returning those assets.

LONDON - Global Witness welcomes today's successful recovery by Libya of a £10 million London house, previously belonging to Colonel Gaddafi’s son, Saadi Gaddafi. The High Court in London ruled that the property, in the up-market London suburb of Hampstead, rightfully belongs to the Libyan state as it had been purchased with diverted Libyan state funds.

The Task Force's Nick Mathiason, writing for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, reported on the asset seizure claim by Libya against the son of the former Libyan dictator.