Financial units exchanged experience in IT

On May 20, 2013 a joint EAG/Egmont group workshop on experience exchange in use of information technologies for carrying out financial analysis for AML/CFT purpose was held in Minsk (Belarus).

The Egmont group Chairman Mr. Boudewijn Verhelst, Head of Belorussian FIU Mr. Alexander Maximenko, EAG Executive Secretary, Rosfinmonitoring Deputy Chairman Mr. Valery Shibin, the Egmont working group on IT head Mrs. Hennie Verbeek-Kusters and ITMCFM Director General Mrs. Galina Bobrysheva made opening speeches at the workshop.

«Eastern Europe region is very active and important in the framework of the Egmont group information exchange network, - Mr. Verhelst highlighted in his speech. – First of all, it’s worth mentioning the Russian FIU. Due to the size of the country as well as its economy size the Rosfinmonitoring is one of the most significant members of the Egmont Group."– Mr. Verhelst noted.

The event will gathered IT specialists from financial intelligence units of various countries.

The workshop was organized by the international Training and Methodology Centre for Financial Monitoring (Russia).

Effective work in anti money laundering field is impossible without use of new information technoogies. Issues connected with use of modern methods of data procession, search and procession of unstructured data, scheme visualisation etc were discussed.

The workshop in Minsk was held on the threshold of the EAG Plenary week and became logical continuation of cooperation on the grounds of the Eurasian group and the Egmont group. Despite rather big experience of two groups' interaction such event on issues of development of the information technologies on base of the EAG and the Egmont group was held for the first time.

Having discussed new decisions and main trends in using information technologies for financial monitoring the workshop’s participants recommended to undertake following steps for extending leading practices and developing of IT systems:

1. Continue experience exchange in use of IT for financial monitoring in Eurasian region. Plan carrying out trainings, conferences and round tables with the use of donor (additional) help in the framework of the EAG working group on technical assistance.
2. The Egmont group IT Working group should find a way to share its experience of holding workshops in other regions.
3. Suggest the EAG Secretariat to inform FATF Plenary and international organizations which are observers to the EAG about final results of the workshop.
4. The EAG together with the Egmont group on IT should consider the possoibility of creating the relevant information resource (web-site section, information publication, interactive forum etc.) for keeping IT-specialists aware of new IT products and experience of its implementation.

Participants speaking

Boudewijn Verhelst, the Egmont group Chairman, Head of the Belgian FIU:
"The Egmont group promotes the ides of combating money laundering regionalization, and this approach proves itself more and more. This event is the first testament of the EAG/Egmont group regional cooperation synergy”, - he underlined. “Regional interaction allows focusing on the problems, which are typical for separate region, which allows working better, more, effectively and operatively”, - the Egmont group Chairman claims. He also confided he was happy to attend the meeting due to the importance for both groups.
Information exchange is one of the most important parts of the work of any FIU. Those financial intelligence units that don’t communicate with their colleagues from other countries work blindly in fact, as money laundering and terrorist financing are transborder crimes in their nature. The first and the most significant advantage of the FIUs, members of the Egmont group, is access to secure connection channels. We use highly confidential channels and we can exchange this information in real time with analytical purpose. The second advantage of the Egmont group is professional experience exchange, which is now being gone at this event.

Hennie Verbeek-Kusters, Head of the Netherlands FIU, Chair of the Egmont working group on IT:
We want to exchange experience, learn something new from each other, look at common and different aspects of our work, find what we can take and further adopt on the national level. Our analysts often assess coming data following their intuition and previous experience. Frequently such knowledge just stays in their minds. We need to make it flow into a system for all the FIUs gain from it. With this aim we work and arrange such workshops.

Valery Shibin, Rosfinmonitoring Deputy Director: Russia has very close technological and information cooperation with the financial intelligence units of EAG member states, including Belarus. IT field has no limits. We all know famous companies connected with information proceeding, such as Microsoft. Rosfinmonitoring builds its own system based on the experience of leading foreign technologies. I will add that we also use very serious developments, which have appeared in Russia recently.

Vitaly Prosvirov, Head of the Office on coordination and international cooperation of the Finanical Monitoring Department of the CSC of Belarus:
Overall, considering information we obtained in the framework of the Egmont group, more than 96 billion rubles were surcharged into the budget last year. Obviously, everyone understands that a financial intelligence unit got its name because we can’t tell all the world about what we do. There are interesting examples related to money cash out abroad, and such information was received from our foreign counterparts.