The Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime and on the Financing of Terrorism (CETS n° 198) held its 11th meeting in Strasbourg from 22 to 23 October 2019.
Amongst other issues, the COP adopted two transversal thematic monitoring reports on the implementation by all 35 States Parties of Article 9, paragraph 3 of the Convention (“Criminalisation of money laundering”) and Article 14 of the Convention (“Postponement of suspicious transactions”). The COP also adopted follow-up reports on previous transversal thematic monitoring reports on Article 11 (“International recidivism”) and Article 25, paragraphs 2 and 3 (“Confiscated property and asset-sharing”) of the Convention.
The COP held exchanges of views with experts from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on the financial investigation involving virtual assets, held exchanges of views with Council of Europe experts on technical assistance in the area of asset-recovery, and discussed different cases on the practical implementation of the Convention.
The COP also elected Mr. Ioannis Androulakis (Greece) as President and Ms. Ana Boskovic (Montenegro) as Vice-President of the COP for a term of two years, and warmly thanked the outgoing President (Mr Branislav Bohacik, Slovak Republic) and Vice-President (Mr Jean-Sébastien Jamart, Belgium) for having chaired the COP in the past four years.
