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The practice of asset return for corruption cases is woefully inadequate. There is no coherent agreed framework. What does this even mean? Who will have oversight and to what degree? Who gets to decide what will ‘improve living conditions’? Seemingly zero preconditions proposed https://twitter.com/navbahor/status/1305130976448741376
Civil society has been calling for a responsible asset return framework + commitments by states for years now. First & foremost that the process needs to adv good governance principles in the country by incentivizing reforms, not on paper but in action, as a precondition
An ad hoc return, made in partnership with the government which as yet has not demonstrated a move from paper to practice, without public & substantial CS input, is a suboptimal response for such a significant asset recovery case
It’s absolutely in the best interest of the Uzbek people for this money to return *to them*, but without a coherent framework and preconditions there’s no guarantee it won’t simply be reappropriated for private interests (see Kazakh II repatriation)
