New research: Illicit Financial Flows in the Mekong & Addressing Illicit Financial Flows in East and Southern Africa

These two research papers contribute to the comparative research phase of a broader project aiming to better understand what enables Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs), whether there is political will to address IFFs and what interventions have been successful in addressing IFFs as part of a politically sensitive approach.

Building upon the initial evidence review conducted in project’s first phase of the project, Reitano (2022) proposed the ‘IFFs pyramid’, a new framework of analysis of IFFs, to explain the three dominant means by which IFFs are enabled, moved and held: financial flows, trade flows and informal flows.

This research tests and applies the ‘IFFs pyramid’, in the context of East and southern Africa and the Mekong region.