Regional Workshop for law enforcement practitioners from GUAM Member States on inter-agency cooperation for preventing and combating money-laundering at the national level

 

Conducted on 13-14 September in Odessa, Ukraine, Regional Workshop on national inter-agency cooperation for prevention and combating money-laundering was the first of a series of workshops especially designed 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 Regional Workshop brought together 41 law enforcement practitioners (financial intelligence and law enforcement officers and judges) from GUAM countries (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine), and AML-experts from international organizations (UNODC and SELEC) and countries with advanced AML-regimes - the US, UK, Hungary, Lithuania and Italy.

The focus was on the mechanisms of inter-action of national authorities mandated to prevent, investigate and prosecute money-laundering and related offences, as well as to locate, seize and confiscate the proceeds from crime. Two days of productive discussions and interactive exchange of views allowed the participants to identify both the best practices and the challenges faced by the judiciary and law enforcement agencies in investigating, prosecuting and adjudicating money-laundering, and to assess the adequacy of confiscation measures in GUAM countries, which are applied for depriving criminals from benefits of crimes.

At the margin of the Regional Workshop the Report on outcomes of the reviews of mechanisms of national inter-agency cooperation for preventing and combating money-laundering in the GUAM Member States was also delivered to the participants. These reviews were recently conducted in Azerbaijan, Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine as a part of the Project implementation plan. The Report presentation based on a comparative analysis of the existing mechanisms of inter-agency cooperation in the mentioned countries, highlighted their strength and weaknesses, and proposed possible solutions on improvement.

 

One of the key outcomes of the Regional Workshop appreciated by all the participants was the establishment of personal networking between widest possible range of national authorities in charge of prevention and suppression to legalization of illegally obtained assets. It is anticipated that the establishment of this network will be critical in concretely improving the quality of ML investigations not only at GUAM region level, but also enhances the capacities of competent authorities to more effectively cooperate worldwide.

More detailed information and workshop materials are available at the GUAM Secretariat web-page http://guam-organization.org/node/1349