Why Restitution

Currently, corruption is paying bad actors very well. At present, asset recovery solutions are simply not bringing back the amounts required to significantly improve the income picture of countries. Many billions are required to, e.g., underpin national development and repair the balance sheets of the many countries and to improve their credit ratings, which are under extreme budgetary pressure.

The aid crisis underway is making matters only worse, with income support to countries’ curtailed or cancelled, and important projects aimed at improving countries’ prospects to improve their domestic resource mobilization ended.

Billions of dollars of assets are lost annually from across the Global South and other jurisdictions as illicit financial flows through corruption, complex fraud, bribery and theft.

These assets and claims relate to misappropriation, corruption, fraud, tort and breach of contract.

It is believed that less than 1% of IFFs due to corruption are ever restituted back to their countries of origin. This figure is staggering and a collective indictment that we have simply not done enough, to date, as an international community.

Innovative Approach

Public-Private Partnerships

Structured Restitution

Restitution Impact brings together interdisciplinary investigations and legal teams working on a pro bono basis, developing robust claims which can be enforced in the civil courts of, e.g., London and New York, while capacitating government officials and civil society with whom we work closely. The burden of proof is much lower and remedies are speedier in civil courts than in criminal courts thereby increasing the odds of getting countries’ money back.

Vast amounts, often in the tens of millions of USD for a single case, are required to litigate by retaining the most experienced, specialized lawyers in civil courts. These complicated, often multi-jurisdictional cases are not undertaken on a pro bono basis. The ‘victim’ countries cannot cover these costs, and donor governments will not fund the actual litigation – the size, scale and risk are simply too much to bear. 

This is where private impact capital, which assumes all the risk, is required. Restitution Impact’s sister company, Restitution Capital, has worked to ensure the vast majority of recovered assets are restituted to its country clients. 

Restitution works with governments that commit themselves to utilize recoveries to implement their national development and repair the balance sheets of the many countries and to improve their credit ratings. It achieves this by structuring restitution, after the recovery phase, through advance agreement by the government.

This process requires transparency and accountability that is bolstered through clear agreements, the ongoing engagement of independent government agencies, and through the involvement from beginning to end by civil society actors.