Recasting ‘accountability’: normative alignment between state and non-state actors for democratizing asset return

Of the vast wealth moved across the globe from corruption, estimated in the billions per year, only a small fraction has been identified, recovered, and returned to the country of origin. Over the past decade, the number of significant asset return cases has proliferated – from the Malaysian 1MDB case to the Karimova case in Uzbekistan and many more. The 2003 United Nations Convention against Corruption established that ill-gotten gains from corruption cases should be returned to their country of origin. However, there remains no coherent agreed framework for how assets should be repatriated. Principles for the disposition of stolen assets in corruption cases, developed for the 2017 Global Forum on Asset Recovery, proposed significant changes to the existing practice of asset return: chiefly, that the process should be democratized. As return models experiment with various innovations to the return process, such as centering the people of a nation as the party owed redress or integrating civil society monitoring in how funds are distributed, there remains a need for common agreed standards. At the heart of this effort are fundamental questions around whose interests the asset return process serves, and how states respond to both populations and non-state actors in establishing the criteria for what constitutes a responsible return model. This paper examines normative alignment between state and non-state actors on democratizing asset return. Using text analysis of three case examples of Nigeria, Ukraine, and Equatorial Guinea, the paper analyzes where principles for responsible asset restitution have entered the mainstream. Furthermore, the paper offers insight into how the transformations that characterize globalization have led to contestation of the legitimacy of the state as an exclusive executor of accountability in cross-border corruption cases more generally, and how distributed agency to non-state actors contributes to democratized policy.