09/10/2020
The EU-ACT project is working with Ukraine, which has received new IT equipment to increase the effectiveness of the Financial Intelligence Unit
José Manuel Colodrás, coordinator of the project in Ukraine, helping to place the material
Organised crime and the consequent money laundering generate a serious risk for the economies of countries due to the increasing risk of laundered money entering the legal economy. The countries of the European Union consider that the most effective way to face this challenge is through financial investigations, which are tools to achieve modern and effective responses against criminal threats.
Financial Intelligence Units (FIU) are entities that are dedicated to analysing suspicious money laundering transactions, information related to money laundering, terrorist financing and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in order to communicate this information to the authorities and FIUs in other countries. In the case of Ukraine, the administrative authority that performs these functions is the State Financial Monitoring Service (SFMS).
Since 2018, the EU-ACT project in Ukraine has supported the work of the SFMS to correct some detected deficiencies. In particular, the lack of investigations into drug-related cases and the lack of clear guidance for conducting financial investigations. Furthermore, work has been carried out to increase the cooperation between Ukraine’s FIU with other agencies at the national level, and with other institutions at the international level. The number of investigations into drug trafficking cases by the FIU is very small compared to other countries, although in recent years it may have increased.
For these reasons, the European project is working with Ukraine to develop a financial investigations manual; provide training in financial data analysis and financial investigations; support the integration of the FIU in international forums and promote networking and communication between said entity and Law Enforcement.
In addition, to solve these deficiencies, through the European project, a donation of 13 computers was made to the SFMS and a practical training course was carried out for 20 analysts. This acquisition has upgraded its hardware and it will be able to train officials and analyse financial transactions using the latest version of i2, software that allows analysts to quickly discover hidden connections and patterns in data, and which is considered to be one of the industry standards for intelligence analysts.
