In 2025, Global Financial Integrity, Academics Stand Against Poverty and Yale’s Global Justice Program will be awarding the twelfth annual Amartya Sen Prizes to the two best original essays examining one particular component of illicit financial flows, the resulting harms, and possible avenues of reform. Essays should be about 7,000 to 9,000 words long. We expect to award prizes totaling USD 8,000 to two or three winners, for example a first prize of USD 5,000 and a second prize of USD 3,000. Winning essays must be available for presentation at the next Yale Global Justice Program conference and for publication in Journal Academics Stand Against Poverty. Past winners are not eligible.
Illicit financial flows are explicitly recognized as an obstacle to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and singled out as target #4 of SDG 16. They are defined as cross-border movements of funds that are illegally earned, transferred, or used – such as funds earned through illegal trafficking in persons, drugs or weapons; funds illegally transferred through mispriced exchanges (e.g., among affiliates of a multinational firm seeking to shift profits to reduce taxes); goods misinvoiced or funds moved in order to evade taxes; and funds used for corruption of or by public or corporate officials.
Components of illicit financial flows can be delimited by sector or geographically. Delimitation by sector might focus your essay on some specific activity, business or industry – such as art, real estate, health care, technology, entertainment, shipping, weapons, agriculture, sports, gaming, education, politics, tourism, natural resource extraction, banking and financial services – or on an even narrower subsector such as the diamond trade, hunting, insurance, or prostitution. Delimitation by geography might further narrow the essay’s focus to some region, country, or province.
Your essay should describe the problematic activity and evaluate the adverse effects that make it problematic. You should estimate, in quantitative terms if possible, the magnitude of the relevant outflows as well as the damage they do to affected institutions and populations. This might include harm from abuse, exploitation and impoverishment of individuals, harm through subdued economic activity and reduced prosperity, and/or harm through diminished tax revenues that depress public spending.
Your essay should also explain the persistence of the harmful activity in terms of relevant incentives and enabling conditions and, based on your explanation, propose plausible ways to curtail the problem. Such reform efforts might be proposed at diverse levels, including supranational rules and regimes, national rules, corporate policies, professional ethics, individual initiatives, or any combination thereof. The task is to identify who has the responsibility, the capacity and (potentially) the knowledge and motivation to change behavior toward effective curtailment. Special credit will be given to papers that provide a detailed description of how change may come about in a particular geographical or sectoral context.
We welcome authors from diverse academic disciplines and from outside the academy. Please send your entry by email attachment on or before 31 August 2025 to Tom Cardamone at SenPrize@gfintegrity.org. While your message should identify you, your essay should be stripped of self-identifying references, formatted for blind review.
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Past Winners
First Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition (2014).
First Prize. Max Everest-Phillips: “Tackling illicit financial flows in developing countries: the long view.”
First Prize. Gillian Brock & Hamish Russell: “Abusive Tax Avoidance and Responsibilities of Tax Professionals.”
Second Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition (2015).
First Prize. Nikolay Anguelov: “Lowering the Corporate Marginal Tax Rate.”
First Prize. Matti Ylonen & Teivo Teivainen: “The Politics of Intra-Firm Trade: corporate price planning and the double role of the Arm’s Length Principle.”
Third Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition (2016).
No award.
Fourth Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition (2017).
First Prize. Mattia Anesa: “Corporate Tax Justifications: in search of the “fair share”.”
Fifth Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition (2018).
First Prize. Kenneth Okpomo: “Political Corruption, Illicit Financial Flows, and the Damage They Do to the Local Economy and Population: a case study of Nigeria.”
Second Prize. Bolarinwa Janet Oluwayinka (2nd): “Assessing the Human Impact of Illicit Financial Flows out of Africa.”
Sixth Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition (2019).
No award.
Seventh Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition (2020).
First Prize. Erhieyovw O’Kenny: “A Stroke of the Keyboard and Click of the Mouse: an anatomy of cyber frauds as a growing component of illicit financial flows.”
Second Prize. Roy Cullen: “Pulling the Plug on Money Laundering in British Columbia, Canada: lessons learned and actions required.”
Second Prize. Philip Mutio: “Illicit Financial Flows and the Extractives Sector on the African Continent: impacts, enabling factors and proposed reform measures.”
Second Prize. Brian Collins Ocen: “When the Hunters Learn to Shoot Without Missing, the Birds Learn to Fly Without Perching: protecting source taxation in Uganda’s upstream oil sector from artificial profit shifting.”
Eighth Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition (2021).
First Prize. Chia-Yun Po: “China’s Role in Myanmar’s Bloody Jade Industry: poison or panacea.”
Second Prize. Christopher Mutinta Ngosa: “The Gendered Impacts of Illicit Financial Flows in Developing Countries.”
Second Prize. Oluebube Offor: “Tales of Terrorism Financing in Nigeria: a panoramic account of its root causes, consequential impacts, and possible reforms.”
Ninth Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition (2022).
First Prize. Savictor Sobechi Evans-Ibe: “Bombing, Billing, and Cash-Out: the dynamics of the illicit flow of money through international cyber fraud by Nigerian “Yahoo Boys”.”
First Prize. Kenneth Mahuni: “”Pandemic in a Pandemic”: Covid 19, public procurement corruption, and illicit financial flows in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
First Prize. Oluebube Offor: “Oil Wealth and Illicit Financial Flows in Nigeria’s Petroleum Sector.”
Tenth Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition (2023).
First Prize. Bilal Moin: “Taming the Untamable: rethinking, regulating, and revamping Hawala.”
Second Prize. Alexander Jacobs: “Pork Knockers, Powder People, and a “Fully Criminalized State”: the dynamics of illicit financial flows in the Surinamese gold sector.”
Second Prize. Chad Osorio: “Battling the Illegal Wildlife Trade through Regulatory Finance: the southeast Asian context.”
Eleventh Amartya Sen Essay Prize Competition (2024).
First Prize. Wisdom Essien: “Digital Shadows in Illicit Financial Flows: unraveling Nigeria’s cryptocurrency paradox and illuminating pathways to financial integrity.”
First Prize. Maunga Mulomba: “Logging in: dismantling the dark web of Africa’s timber industry.”
First Prize. Thant Thura Zan & Soe Thaw Tar Kyaw Min: “From Casinos to Criminal Networks: the illicit financial flows of southeast Asia’s online fraud schemes with a focus on Myanmar.”
Exceptionally, the jury recognized with honorable mention a fourth strong submission composed by Nater Akpen: “The Biographical, Anatomical, Economic and Legal Aspects of Illicit Organ Trade.”