A long, hard slog

IN THE early days of the Arab Spring of 2010-11, there was bright-eyed talk of moving quickly to locate and grab back the vast sums believed to have been plundered by the region’s toppled regimes and their cronies, and using the recovered funds to support economic reconstruction. It didn’t take long for the optimism to subside. So it is likely to prove in Ukraine, where investigators are still trying to get their arms around the scale of the kleptocracy of the Yanukovych era. Asset recovery is a slog, studded with obstacles that range from the deviousness of those hiding the money to the clunkiness of the international legal framework for identifying, freezing and repatriating looted wealth. Ukraine’s investigators have already had a lucky break. Some 200 folders of documents, dumped in a lake (pictured) behind the former residence of Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed president, by his entourage as they fled, stubbornly refused to sink and have been fished out and dried (with help from the presidential sauna). Many can be viewed online. Among the papers are receipts for payment of $115,000...Continue reading