Jacopo Costa

This study focuses on the movement of money in a financial infrastructure built to conceal its origin and destination. The literature has addressed this theme in the field of money laundering, converting illegal money into a legitimate source, yet less is known about the reverse process, hiding and transferring legally generated resources to pay ki...

Actors in grand corruption schemes often conspire and deliberately create sophisticated networks to extract huge amounts of public resources from government systems. They hide such conspiracies behind hybrid formal/ informal arrangements. Using a mixed methods approach, this study investigates the corruption scheme initiated by former Peruvian Pres...

Effectively managing conflicts of interest in the public sector is crucial to mitigate corruption risks. It is also fundamental to building well-functioning institutions and to generating trust in government. How are different states doing this? What models exist? What are the challenges? To answer these questions, this Working Paper analyses confl...

This Working Paper presents international case studies of legal frameworks addressing conflicts of interest and highlights common challenges, opportunities and lessons for practitioners and other interested stakeholders. The report covers three contexts: two national (South Korea, Brazil) and one supranational (the European Union). The analysis is...

The paper interprets informal networks as investments made by citizens and business people to cope with the public sphere. Informal networks often orchestrate corruption, connecting public and private actors. The paper aims to understand their key characteristics, scopes, and functional roles. Ten mini case studies from Tanzania and Uganda are stud...

The paper investigates the role of criminal networks in fostering illegal wildlife trade (IWT), and how these relational structures interact with transnational organized crime. The paper frames these topics within the debate around the opportunistic or organized nature of IWT. The aim is to understand how chaotic behaviors can transform into an ord...

The paper targets the nexus between corruption and money laundering. Scholars and practitioners recently observed how offshore financial centers and financial infrastructures have become central in facilitating corruption and other criminal activities. Offshore vehicles often serve to conceal the connections between business people and politically...

The article analyses drivers and determinants of illicit wildlife trade (IWT), targeting those factors that support the participation of individuals in poaching and transportation of wildlife goods. These factors are often explained in economic and institutional terms. Recently, scholars have started to recognise the importance of socio-cultural an...

Corruption is frequently associated with money alone and the behaviours of a few individual “bad apples” operating in otherwise healthy governance systems. This is too simplistic. As the latest research shows, including research in Tanzania and Uganda on which this Policy Brief is based, corruption is a networked phenomenon. This Policy Brief expla...

This Policy Brief distils recommendations for Collective Action practitioners based on empirical insights on certain forms of corruption involving private-sector actors. Field research carried out in Tanzania and Uganda produced detailed case studies that show how informal networks link private and public sector actors to pursue common illicit goal...

Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) poses a threat to many countries in Africa, Asia, South and Central America. While the role of informal networks in sustaining wildlife trafficking is ever more on the radar of scholars and practitioners, their modus operandi remains largely understudied. The literature tells us that these informal networks play a role...

This working paper is based on an empirical investigation of corruption and illicit exchange related to the so-called “Lava Jato” or “Odebrecht” scandal. Focusing on former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo and his laundering of bribes obtained from the construction giant Odebrecht, the case serves as an indicative example for many similar cases...

This working paper is based on an empirical investigation of corruption and illicit exchange related to the so-called “Lava Jato” or “Odebrecht” scandal. Focusing on former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo and his laundering of bribes obtained from the construction giant Odebrecht, the analysis aims to test the usefulness of applying a network l...

Behaviour change interventions aimed at reducing the social acceptability of wildlife trafficking are an important part of efforts to prevent wildlife crime. This policy brief summarises lessons learned about how to develop and frame effective messages in the context of these interventions, based on field work conducted in Uganda. A key first step...

This policy brief explains how intelligence practitioners within law enforcement authorities and researchers skilled in social network analysis (SNA) can and should cooperate better in the fight against illegal wildlife trade (IWT). Intelligence data are crucial for SNA researchers to conduct empirical analysis of illicit activities and dark netwo...

This report is part of a multi-disciplinary project focused on intelligence-led action against financial crime in illegal wildlife trade (IWT). Under this project, the Public Governance division of the Basel Institute on Governance is leading research in East Africa that aims to contribute to the prevention and combating of IWT by developing a bett...

This report presents the findings of a novel application of social network analysis (SNA) to study a criminal network surrounding an East Africa-based wildlife trafficker. This technique focuses on understanding structural, functional and sociometric characteristics of networks by mapping social interactions between individuals and groups. Particul...

This policy brief explains how intelligence practitioners within law enforcement authorities and researchers skilled in social network analysis (SNA) can and should cooperate better in the fight against illegal wildlife trade (IWT). Intelligence data are crucial for SNA researchers to conduct empirical analysis of illicit activities and dark networ...

This Working Paper is a key output of the Basel Institute's Green Corruption programme, a multi-disciplinary engagement that targets environmental degradation through tested anti-corruption, asset recovery and governance methods. The research is funded by PMI Impact as part of a wider project on intelligence-led on financial crime in illegal wildli...

This policy brief summarises the main findings from extensive field research on the drivers, facilitators and strategies of wildlife trafficking in Uganda. It translates the insights described in Working Paper 33: A worm’s-eye view of wildlife trafficking in Uganda into recommendations for practitioners and policymakers. The research shows that ind...

This report was produced in the context of a cross-divisional initiative to promote systematic, intelligence- led action against IWT networks in East Africa and Southeast Asia. As part of this initiative, the Public Governance division of the Basel Institute is leading research and community engagement activities in East Africa. The goal is to cont...

This report provides a first iteration of preliminary insights from the social network analysis of transnational wildlife trafficking networks operating along the East Africa – Southeast Asia trading chain. Initial insights on the structure and characteristics of social networks engaged in wildlife trafficking in East Africa suggest that they opera...

As part of a multi-disciplinary programme of work focused on intelligence-led action against financial crime in illegal wildlife trade (IWT), the Public Governance division of the Basel Institute on Governance is leading research and community engagement activities in East Africa. The objective is to contribute towards the prevention and combating...

As part of a multi-disciplinary programme of work focused on intelligence-led action against financial crime in illegal wildlife trade (IWT), the Public Governance division of the Basel Institute on Governance is leading research and community engagement activities in East Africa. The objective is to contribute towards the prevention and combating...

This paper examines the role of illicit networks and transnational crime organisations in fostering match-fixing and illegal betting in the globalised world. The goal is to identify the characteristics of these illicit phenomena and their basic structures and functions. Social network analysis was conducted to explore the scandal known as Calciosco...

This paper examines the role of illicit networks and associations in a corrupt exchange in contemporary Italy with the aim of better understanding the mechanisms of corruption. A social network analysis was conducted to explore the Big Events affair and the scandal concerning the School of Carabinieri officers in Florence. Much attention is focused...

Economists offer a rational-choice perspective on conflict, using approaches that range from the game theoretic to the experimental. Modern economics has largely ignored the issue of outright conflict as an alternative way of allocating goods, assuming instead the existence of well-defined property rights enforced by an undefined third party. And y...

We empirically analyze the link between state capacity and civil conflict via the manufacturing sector, which is the source of wealth for an emerging new elite interested in obtaining political representation, and is the outcome of a new political equilibrium more in tune with capital accumulation. This raises the cost of civil conflict, reducing i...

In this paper we empirically analyze the socio-economic determinants of the existence of military dictatorships in Africa. A recent literature in political economy analyses the relationship between the civil undemocratic government and the military as an agency problem: the civilian government needs the army to avoid internal violence, but a larger...

In this note we empirically analyze the link between state capacity and civil conflict via the manufacturing sector, which is the source of wealth for emerging new elite interested in obtaining political representation, and is the outcome of a new political equilibrium more in tune with capital accumulation. This raises the cost of civil conflict,...