On 5-7 March 2013, a regional workshop "Improving Practices in Direct International Law Enforcement Cooperation to Detect and Investigate Money-Laundering" was held in Baku, Azerbaijan. It is the second of a series of workshops organized under the UNODC Project "Strengthening capacities of the GUAM Member States to cooperate at the national and regional levels in combating money-laundering as well as in seizing and confiscating crime proceeds".
The workshop was attended by twenty four law enforcement personnel including prosecutors, and FIU (maybe provide the breakdown of the abbreviation) officers from the GUAM countries (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova), as well as AML (maybe provide the breakdown of the abbreviation also) practitioners from Latvia, Estonia, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, UK (Guernsey) and USA. The main goal was to re-enforce direct "informal" regional law enforcement cooperation to detect/investigate money-laundering operations which focus on corruption and other financial crimes through sharing best practices and lessons learned on the subject of anti-money-laundering among the GUAM Member States and other countries with the advanced AML regimes, and to further foster networking.
Three days of productive discussions and an interactive exchange of practices allowed the GUAM participants to identify the main challenges they face in direct international cooperation, and to propose the means of addressing these challenges considering good practices shared by the AML practitioners from the above mentioned countries. The participants found the workshop to be very useful, having stressed its urgency and practical applicability that allowed them to improve their knowledge and skills, as well as its contribution in developing a network for future professional communication and collaboration.
