Main points

• Asset return remains unfinished business. The global rules of the game have still to be settled. The world is still feeling its way.
• ‘Politics’ has distracted the early years of international debate. While developing countries (the ‘victims’ of stolen assets) want funds to be returned unconditionally, developed countries (donors) want to ensure returned funds won’t be re-corrupted.
• On the positive side, the dialogue now shows more of a consensus than it did in those early days. On the negative side, there have still been far too few successful recoveries and returns. These remain extraordinarily complex and time consuming, even with parties sharing the best resolve.
• The challenges for donors wanting to help are similar to the challenges they face supporting action against money laundering and illicit flows, as highlighted in Note 5. These include time, multi-agency complexity, and uncertainty of outcome.
• Yet we are in a much better place today than when we started, not least because of increasing experience and experimentation, and the increased expectations among civil society and citizens that returned assets should be transparently used to support development.