A two-day event held in Niš brought together around forty representatives of public institutions and private sector from southern region of Serbia to conclude a nationwide series of workshops aimed at enhancing Serbia’s collective response to risks of money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation.

The workshops, held on separate days for public and private sector participants, marked the final phase of a broader capacity-building initiative focused on raising awareness of law enforcement, judiciary and reporting entities accross the country on new risks and emerging threats and how these risks and threats should shape their internal policies. 

Knowing and understanding risks, threats and vulnerabilities of the system at the national leval will feed into bussiness-entity level risk assessment of reporting entities, into their due dilligence procedures and into models for monitoring of the transactions. At the same time law enforcement agencies and judiciary will revise prioritization of the cases under their competence, learn to recognize innovative typologies and which data to focus on when  investigating money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation. Special attention was given to regional risk patterns, criminal offenses typical for the region and compliance challenges specific to the business environment in southern Serbia.

Organized with the support of the Government Coordination Body for the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing, the Niš event concluded a series of regional workshops held across Serbia over the past year. Over 300 participants in 4 events, testify of the commitment of the participants and value of obtained knowledge and shared case-based experiences.

The activity has taken place within the Project “Countering Economic Crime in Serbia”, funded by the Swedish International Development Agency, and implemented by the Council of Europe.