The Council of Europe, in cooperation with the High School of Justice (HSOJ) of Georgia, developed a training module on the topic of “Adjudication of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Cases” to be used by the HSOJ during in-service trainings of candidate and siting judges. A related Training of Trainers course (ToT), based on the developed training module, was delivered for judge-trainers of the HSOJ in view of enhancing their skills in delivering further trainings on this topic.

The training module reflects the AML/CFT trends and typologies, international standards and relevant national requirements in regard to investigating money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) cases as well as relevant challenges in combating ML/TF. It also provides insights into such topics as building and analysing evidence, ensuring quality of judicial decisions in ML/TF cases (including examples of court reasoning) and adjudication of these cases through relevant international case-law. The training module will be further embedded by the HSOJ in its in-service training program for candidate and sitting judges.

A follow-up ToT program was delivered for 6 judge-trainers of the HSOJ which provided a platform to discuss trends and challenges faced by judges when adjudicating money laundering and other economic crime cases. The agenda of the ToT program included topics related to the use of financial investigations in the fight against economic crime, considerations related to the standard of proof and evaluation of evidence, importance of international cooperation and effective methods for ensuring confiscation and recovery of proceeds from crime.

These activities were organised in the framework of the project “Consolidating and Enhancing the Institutional and Operational Frameworks for the Prevention and Combatting of Corruption, Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in Georgia” co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and implemented by the Council of Europe in their Partnership for Good Governance III 2023-2027.