Illicit use of Money: Enhancing Interagency Cooperation

On 2-4 July 2014, the Regional Workshop on "Illicit use of Money and Value Transfer Services (MVTS): Enhancing Inter-Agency working and Financial Intelligence" & "Tenth regional meeting among the Financial Intelligence Units of the countries in West and Central Asia" were held in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic. It was organized under the UNODC Regional Programme for Afghanistan and Neighboring countries and attended by senior experts from Afghanistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan as well as the Russian Federation, USA and EU as observers.

The Workshop highlighted, amongst others, current variations in approaches to Money and Value Transfer Services as well as sharing some information on challenges and successes in other regions. The Workshop also facilitated the identification of areas for development which will enhance each West and Central Asian country's ability to mitigate current and/or future threats from illicit use of Money and Value Transfer Services.

The workshop, although focused on the illicit opiate trade, provided a clear and useable framework for developing intelligence collection which can be used to better understand and disrupt other threats where finance is a key element of the criminal enterprise. The participants at the workshop worked closely during interactive sessions to create an intelligence collection framework covering "key information requirements, likely sources, collection assets and priorities". Participants also discussed issues related to identifying where expertise or capability gaps exist and how to work together with experts from UNODC to identify requirements for technical assistance and network development. Moreover, the participants expressed their support for the RP "Regional Anti Money Laundering Group of Experts/Network" by committing to specific actions on their side for strengthening this mechanism.