Judges and Prosecutors from North Macedonia straightened their capacities in the fight against MLFT

21 - 23 November, Thessaloniki, Greece, Does a change in the way of work of a particular individual lead to a change of approach of the agency where that individual works, and even lead to a change in a whole society with the aim to build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels and provide access to justice for all? But how that individual start to change its way of approaching things in the first place? Can we find that answer in a capacity-building training programme?

A total of 10 experts (6 females) from the Public Prosecutor’s Office for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption, Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Basic Criminal Court for Organized Crime and Corruption participated in the 3-day training course for judges and prosecutors from North Macedonia, focusing on Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) more specifically on Prosecution and advocacy techniques including judge awareness.

The training course focused on providing participants with skills and knowledge concerning the preparation for court and the issues that may arise during the trial such as Building a case, Development of a case theory, threshold and reliability of evidence (including European court decisions), Admissibility of evidence and use of technology in the courtroom. Separate attention was given to confiscation and how to calculate the illegal proceeds. A big part of the training was dedicated to practical exercises that lead to the opportunity to practice and implement the skills and techniques taught and cases from European court decisions on ML as well as international standards regarding minimal evidence in ML cases.

The participants highlighted the benefits of this type of training provided under the Court Preparation Project underlining that “The training is productive and useful and will help us to change our views differently” and one prosecutor went a step further and stated “ Тhis training helped me to encourage myself in the case I am currently working on and although I was advised that tax evasion cannot be linked to money laundering...I hope to prove otherwise and especially to encourage all of us working on money laundering cases when we don’t have conviction for the predicate offence.”

The AML/CFT Prosecution and advocacy techniques including judge awareness is the fourth workshop to be delivered under the AML/CFT Court Preparation project, which includes five progressively advanced courses that focus on various legal capacity-building areas.

The training was delivered by two AML/CFT experts from the Netherlands.

The capacity building training course was financially supported by the Bureau of Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State, USA.