Last month I urged those whose investigate or prosecute corruption cases for a living to peruse and bookmark Guide to Combating Corruption & Fraud in Development Projects, an invaluable web page developed by the International Anticorruption Resource Center.  Today I recommend anticorruption professionals do the same for CAMPUS, an e-learning site developed by the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery.

CAMPUS currently contains four courses with more promised.  The four now available teach the user to: 1) use Excel to analyze financial records, 2) devise graphics to visualize cases and money flows, 3) show an individual is living beyond his or her means, and 4) analyze suspicious transaction reports.  Even those who are computer-challenged will find the courses easy to navigate. I have completed two and am working my way through the other two and have never had a better experience with an online course.  The substance of each is first-rate, and as with the Anticorruption Resource Center’s Guide, even veteran investigators and prosecutors will benefit from taking the courses.  Perhaps best of all, unlike many online courses computerization enhances rather than detracts from the learning experience. Take the course on using Excel to analyze financial records.

It starts by showing the user how to open an Excel file containing three years of a hypothetical suspect’s bank statements.  It goes to demonstrate perhaps the most critical, if often overlooked step, when analyzing financial data with a computer: how to copy the entries and thus lock the original data, thus preserving its integrity.  From there the user learns how to sort and filter the entries with examples showing how sorting and filtering can quickly pinpoint anomalous entries.  The user is then given exercises on sorting and filtering to work through with pointers provided in the event that, like me, the user takes a wrong turn.  The course finishes by showing how to create a pivot table in Excel and why pivot table are so useful.

The courses can be accessed free of charge online or downloaded for use later. The instructions for downloading are clear and easy to follow.  The STR course is avaible in Spanish as well as English

Congratulations to ICAR for its CAMPUS courses. Please add more soon!