Return of Illicit Assets Act

The Swiss parliament has finally passed the “Return of Illicit Assets Act” (R.I.A.A.): a law made for those of real hard cases where money in Swiss bank accounts is known to be acquired in a wrong way(corruption). The R.I.A.A. targets those countries where normal regulation has no impact anymore due to corruption and instability, which makes it even harder  to prepare, run and win a trial against presidents and ministers of those corrupt governments.

In fact this is not the first strike towards this kind of criminality : over the past 20 years, 1.5 billion dollars have been returned thanks to Swiss efforts to the rightful governments. This money came from some of the most notorious presidents known as corrupted  such as Sani Abacha (Nigeria), Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines) and Carlos Salinas (Mexico). Presently, the Swiss parliament is focusing on the Duvaliers family: Jean-Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) “inherited” the presidency from his father and continued stealing millions of governmental funds and aid money until he had to flee his country.

Thomas Pav

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/opinion/04iht-edvlasic.html