The Economic Crime and Cooperation Division of the Council of Europe organised, on 20-22 September a workshop on “Comparative Solutions and Good Practices for Financial Intelligence Units on Strategic and Operational Analysis” for practitioners from Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) from over 20 countries.
The workshop was convened taking into account that strategic analysis is paramount for FIUs to determine money laundering and terrorist financing threats and vulnerabilities, as well as to identify trends and patterns and guide the development of successful policies to mitigate related risks. The operational analysis of FIUs is instrumental in following the trail of particular activities or transactions, and in determining links between those targets and possible proceeds of crime, money laundering, predicate offences or terrorist financing, as it has already been established by the FATF.
During the workshop, over 65 participants discussed on the challenges and opportunities for enhancing the strategic and operational analysis of FIUs. An emphasis was put on the multiple dimensions of the process, such as the setup of relevant structures and procedures, the appropriate use of available data, the prioritisation of analysis, the use of IT tools, as well as inter-agency cooperation and partnerships. The participants also discussed the challenges posed by the Virtual Assets and Virtual Asset Service providers for the FIUs in terms of collecting and analysing data. The workshop contributed to sharing of experience and discussing different approaches and practices which could bring a qualitative transformation of the way FIUs operate.
Workshop participants included public officials of Financial Intelligence Units from EU member States; Eastern Partnership, and Central Asian countries; Israel; British Crown Dependencies; and Gibraltar. Representatives from the EU Directorate General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) and MONEYVAL, also joined the discussions.
The workshop was convened by the Technical Support Instrument “Enhancing the effectiveness of the anti-money laundering framework in Slovak Republic”, “Strengthening the Estonian anti-money laundering framework” and other related TSI projects as well as the Partnership for Good Governance Project “Strengthening Measures to prevent and combat economic crime”, and the Central Asia Rule of Law Programme, all of which are joint endeavours of the EU and the Council of Europe.