Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to work on a project exploring the financial dimension of international crimes, i.e. war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression. The project’s premise was that international crimes are big business, and generate a significant financial footprint, yet their financial disruption — and prosecution of funders and profiteers — remains in its infancy.
The project team included my colleagues at the Australian National University (ANU), Professor Matthew Neuhaus and then-student Emily Bell, and Dmytro Koval, Co-Executive Director of Truth Hounds, a Ukrainian war crimes investigation centre. The resulting report, War Funders and Profiteers: Economic Complicity in International Crimes in Ukraine and Beyond, was published by ANU’s Centre for International and Public Law, with a summary available here.
Our focus was on Ukraine as a case study, given the amounts involved and the meticulous documentation of international crimes committed by Russia (not least thanks to the efforts by Truth Hounds). This notwithstanding, almost all of our findings and recommendations are applicable globally. Indeed, organisations such as The Sentry had been calling for a greater focus on the finances of war crimes for years. As we put it in the report, ‘[t]he obliviousness of international criminal law to economic complicity has been failing Africa for decades, and is now failing Ukraine too’.
As part of our research, we held consultations in Canberra, Brussels, The Hague and London. These meetings helped confirm our findings that existing responses were falling short and refine recommendations for future action.
These discussions also resulted in the development of two documents on economic complicity in international crimes, embedded below: a High-Level Roadmap and the accompanying 10 Principles, which set out the priority actions that we call on governments to take.
These Roadmap and Principles have garnered endorsements from leading experts and institutions. Many of them were involved in our initial consultations, and others have lent their support to these recommendations later on.
We welcome further endorsements and any ideas on how best to get the message across to governments worldwide. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss.
Economic Crime Law 