Main points

• Origin countries increasingly use private lawsuits based on civil proceedings to recover assets.
• Providing many valuable advantages, the civil route nonetheless comes with high litigation costs.
• The involvement of private actors who bear the litigation costs of asset recovery cases appears to be one option to address this funding issue.
• Private litigation funding in asset recovery remains scarcely regulated, which gives rise to risks of conflict of interest and opacity.
• Alongside a growing role for traditional models of private litigation funding, more novel practices, such as the sale of claims by origin countries to groups of investors, also appear to be on the rise, which brings additional risks and challenges to the integrity of the process and may, ultimately, undermine the whole asset recovery process and reinforce public distrust in measures to counter corruption.