Aktion Finanzplatz Schweiz (AFP) has a distinguished track record in lobbying and campaigning both in Switzerland and the countries of origin, and facilitating civil society participation in those countries in the use and monitoring of repatriated funds. Due to favourable policy in Switzerland, we have a headstart in this field of work. AFP has sucessfully lobbyed and campaigned for a transparent repatriation of the Swiss Abacha funds including participation of Nigerian civil society organisations in the monitoring of the development projects financed with the funds. Moreover it has substantially contributed to building the political will of the Haitian and Congolese governments to repatriate their funds. These are just three examples of our campaigning in the field of stolen asstes.
Our second main field of work is debt management and debt relief. Our three years’ programme on illegitimate debt aims at improving the understanding of binding legal instruments in international law (peremptory norms, general principles) and private law (due diligence, reasonability, agency law, clean hands) as a second tool for debt assessment apart from renegotiation and debt cancellation. In 2007 we organized an international conference on illegitimate debt in Berne and since 2008 we have been working with a working group of legal experts and NGO-people with the aim of publishing different legal studies on the concept of illegitimate debt.