EL BLOG DE LA FIIAPP. Cooperación Española

The European Union Action against Drugs and Organised Crime (EU-ACT) project is funded by the European Union and managed by FIIAPP. It is run in five regions that cover what has been called the “Heroin Route”, though in reality there is more than one route involved. Ukraine is the priority country in the Eastern European region.

The aim of the EU-ACT project in Ukraine is to promote an all-encompassing approach to the problem of drugs: to support the work of the institutions responsible for strengthening law enforcement while favouring demand control. Accordingly, the scope of work of EU-ACT covers different sectors of the Ukrainian Public Administration and civil society.  A fact easily attested to by simply pointing to the “registered” beneficiaries before the Government of Ukraine: The Ministry of Health,  the Drug Observatory, the Medication and Drug Control Service, the State Tax Service, the Ministry of the Interior and within this the Border Service and the National Police of Ukraine,  the Public Prosecutor’s  Office, the Ukraine Administration of Justice Service, the Ministry of Justice,  the Prison Service and the Financial Intelligence Unit of Ukraine.

As stated in its Description of Action (DoA), this project takes an innovative approach to establishing its activities by paying heed to the needs expressed by its beneficiaries. So much so that an agreement was reached with them on the main areas of development of the project in the Ukraine, which are the following:

Support for the Ukraine National Drug Strategy (2013-2020) and the Action Plan (2018-2020) that develops this strategy in which the EU-ACT project has participated in the design phase highlighting, among other activities, support for the participation of the Ukrainian Delegation in the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime ( UNODC ), both at the 61st session (2018) and the 62nd session (2019). Moreover, continuous advice and support has been given in all those legal initiatives related to drug policy. In this regard, the following measures are particularly worthy of mention: regulation of the use of Naloxone to avoid deaths by overdose, the decriminalisation of the possession of small quantities of drugs for self-consumption, the extending of the powers of the Ukraine Drug Observatory  and the establishment of alternative measures to prison for minor offences related to drug use.

Furthermore, the project also participates in the initiative and the development of the National Rehabilitation Programme for prisoners with mental and behavioural disorders caused by the consumption of psychoactive substances. This activity is developed in collaboration with the Ukraine Prison Service.

In addition, backing is being given to the creation of an Investigation Coordination Centre for crimes related to drug trafficking between the different Ukraine police agencies, which represents a first step in implementing an intelligence model in the Ukraine that will allow policy makers to make evidence-based decisions. To this end, the best practice or model to be followed has been chosen: the Centre for Intelligence against Terrorism and Organised Crime (CITCO) which is attached to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior.

On the initiative of the Ukrainian Public Prosecutor’s Office and with the support of the Ukraine Regional Office, the EU-ACT project launched the Network of Black Sea Public Prosecutors in September 2018 in the city of Odessa (Ukraine), which has already brought together public prosecutors from Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, Iran and Ukraine.

The EU-ACT project also supports the integration of Ukrainian administrations into European Union institutions, as well as other supranational organisations. These include the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addictions  (EMCDAA),  the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) or the Paris Pact Initiative (PPI).

With respect to the fight against the illegal trafficking of psychoactive substances, criminal organisation leaders are being deprived of the gains obtained from their criminal activity as this is the only way to obtain a relevant and prolonged impact against this activity. The EU-ACT Regional Office together with the Ukraine Intelligence Unit and all the agencies responsible for strengthening the enforcement of the law of Ukraine is developing a method adapted to the country to carry out financial investigations in parallel to the traditional ones in this area.

One of the objectives of EU-ACT is to strengthen the inter- and intra–regional cooperation of the countries in which the project is carried out, thus backing the joint investigation work of Ukrainian police forces and prosecutors with other countries, while at the same time encouraging the exchange of experts between countries, both under the project itself and within the context of the CEPOL programme.

Lastly, and following the Spanish  National Plan on Drugs model, it is in the process of creating a special fund in the Ukraine for goods confiscated on the back of drug-trafficking related crime.

Morocco has a long history in the regulation of the carriage of dangerous goods by road. The country has been a signatory of the European Agreement concerning the international carriage of dangerous goods by road  (ADR) since 2001 and ten years later, in 2011, Law 30/05 was published that regulates the carriage of dangerous goods in the country. This establishes the framework for this mode of transport but refers local transport to the effective application of the international agreement.. Going a step further on this path, the FIIAPP now manages, in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Works, a twinning project in Morocco that, funded by the European Union, is committed to safety in the carriage of dangerous goods by road based on the ADR.

This project aims to improve safety and strengthen the structure and activities related to the carriage of dangerous goods by road, and its main objective is the preparation of the regulatory texts mentioned in Law 30/05.

The necessary regulations for the application of ADR in domestic transport, adapted to the intrinsic characteristics of the country, have already been developed by the Spanish specialists participating in this project. The Moroccan Administration, after the legal wording of these texts has been adapted to the Moroccan legislative technique, will begin the administrative procedure for the approval and publication of the set of laws that will regulate not only the carriage of dangerous goods, but also all fields which concern and are affected by this carriage.

The carriage of dangerous goods is multifaceted, meaning that many ministries, professional sectors and organisations are involved, hence the complexity of this twinning which, although it actually belongs to the Moroccan Ministry of Transport, affects and requires collaboration and cooperation by other ministries and agencies of the Moroccan administration. Hence the complexity, the difficulty and the captivating nature of the project, which concerns a large part of the administration of a country, numerous professional and economic sectors and, best of all, affects all citizens. We must not forget that the ultimate objective is to make the carriage of dangerous goods safer, since these goods are transported at all hours, every day. Suffice to mention the carriage of gas bottles, which is very common in this country.

Therefore, taking into account the progress made with the project and aware of the difficulties entailed by legislative publications in all countries, we can confirm, without fear of error, that Morocco is at the starting point of the application of ADR in its territory, which will mean a very important added value for this country, and it will be the first country in this area to fully apply this agreement. This will help Morocco to become the first country in North Africa and the Atlantic façade to apply ADR to its internal transport, always adapted to the intrinsic characteristics of this territory.

The international scope of the project has facilitated the introduction of the Moroccan administration into the international groups of the United Nations where the details of the ADR rules are discussed, approved and debated. This will give Morocco the opportunity to discuss, propose, and understand the situation of this mode of transport in the rest of the countries that have signed the ADR agreement. In addition, it will enable Morocco to achieve an important, prominent status in its regional area, in particular, with regard to North African countries and the Mediterranean basin.

Thus, after effective application of the texts in Morocco, the country will be the leader of this type of transport in its region. All this will assist economic consolidation, consolidation of the road transport sector and, most of all, it will help to make transport safer, which will directly affect the citizens of this country, its infrastructures and the environment. Once again, cooperation will have provided a country with the necessary tools to drive economic and social development and good governance .

In recent times there has been a change in international development agendas, and also in the public policies of different countries, towards ever more comprehensive approaches which are less incrementalist than those seen before. To mention one example, if climate change is a global issue that affects different sectors and multiple territories, does it make sense to focus on cities, to reduce emissions in central hubs or in restricted areas? It may not have a significant impact in terms of reducing emissions, but it does have a significant impact in terms of changing the development model and its relationship with cities. It is not a matter of summing efforts together city by city—this is never-ending—and achieving certain goals, but one of changing behaviour from one generation to another.   

In terms of the international agenda, this trend has been marked by the acceptance by most countries of a series of objectives that shape development, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is as if these countries are committing themselves to a de facto renewal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations, on 10 December 1948, just 70 years ago. These newer development goals focus on poverty, hunger, health, water, industry and climate, among other issues, and they focus on a different way of doing things.  

An interesting example of this is the work of groups of women who, in the 1980s, fled the war in Guatemala to find refuge in the southern areas of Mexico, then later, on their return to Guatemala, they managed to promote substantial changes in the communities where they were resettled. These are processes that occurred outside the major axes of the social and political conflict that marked the cities, neighbourhoods and rural areas, the counterinsurgency struggle and violence, but they were able to articulate a sense of community that would become essential at the time when democracy was re-established. Once the women achieved co-ownership of the land in the communities to which they returned, there was a change in power relations, and if that is accompanied by organisation and leadership, as was the case, it can lead to other changes in terms of the participation and political representation of women at the national level.  

The new vision that the SDGs promote consists of the analysis of problems from a broader perspective and in promoting changes in power relations, not just in progress measured in percentages for compartmentalised goals.  To this we must add what we already knew, that both civil society and the local sphere play a very important role in the implementation of public policies.  

As the rationale behind the SDGs is not incrementalist, it has a great potential to encompass actions that arise in local and civil society spheres, and it is not limited to drawing up lines of action in which the State is the only player. It is here where the impact of small, locally supported actions can be very positive at the national and even global level.  

Human trafficking and smuggling, according to different reports, ranks third in the world’s most lucrative businesses, after trafficking in drugs and weapons. This business is global and therefore the only way to address it effectively is through the coordination of multidisciplinary agents on the three levels of action: local, regional and international.  Human smuggling and trafficking are intrinsically connected since smuggling refers to illegally moving people from one country to another for economic or material benefit, while trafficking refers to the crime committed when a person is captured, transported, transferred and received for exploitation.

Millions of people are not only caught by deceit and false promises in their countries of origin, but they also risk their lives to reach a destination where labour or sexual exploitation awaits them. To all this must be added the large sums of money they pay, without any guarantees, to the mafias who are experts in organised crime and who profit from their suffering.

The report on the global index for slavery, victims of smuggling and trafficking calculates that, as of July 2018, there were 40.3 million victims of trafficking in the world, of which 71% are women and 25% are under 18 years of age. The victims of human smuggling are men and women, but the predominant profile of the victims of trafficking are most definitely women and the cause of exploitation is mostly sexual.

Today, Nigeria is one of the most important source countries for human trafficking and smuggling in the world. Thousands of women and children from West Africa are recruited for trafficking before being taken to Nigeria and then smuggled out of the country, mainly to Europe, and treated as chattel. Specifically, this illegal activity is centralised in the State of Edo, a 2016 UNODC report, estimates that 94% of the women of Nigerian origin trafficked in Europe came from this state.

We cannot ignore the large number of internally displaced people there currently are in Nigeria due to the internal Boko Haram war. Undoubtedly, this elevated number of men and women expelled from their homes provides ideal conditions for the traffickers.

Therefore, the causes behind this business are extremely complex because they are associated with structural factors that are difficult to mitigate, such as poverty and war. For this reason, FIIAPP, along with the ATIPSOM project, is following the strategy adopted not only by the European Union but also by the Nigerian National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), which is based on: preventing trafficking through information and awareness to prevent thousands of women being caught by deception; protecting victims of trafficking and smuggling who have returned to Nigeria, and; pursuing the traffickers and smugglers with the ultimate goal of prosecuting them based on current legislation penalising these kinds of actions. In relation to this last point, FIIAPP can count on the experience of the Spanish National Police in investigation and coordination, which is essential to improving the results concerning the identification, pursuit and prosecution of the hundreds of criminals trafficking and smuggling people between the different Nigerian states.

The following actions cut across these three pillars: strengthening the coordination between government agencies and the collection of the quantitative and qualitative data needed to improve the design of actions and public policies; strengthening the coordination between the authorities in the different countries, not only in Nigeria, but also in the transit countries: Nigeria, Algeria and Libya, and strengthening the coordination between authorities and civil society by creating spaces for the exchange of information, experiences and actions.

All the actions follow a gender approach since, as indicated, trafficking is mainly a business based on the dehumanisation of women as a sexual instrument.

This project undoubtedly complements the Nigerian government’s strategy, not only so that the actions are viable and sustainable, but also so that coordination and cooperation between all the countries involved might form the structural pillars for long-term participation to reduce the number of women and men who are victims of this new form of slavery in the 21st century.

Money laundering is generally one of the most significant problems for states at the social, economic and political levels. Drug trafficking, the funding of terrorism and corruption are its most prominent predicate offences.

Through international treaties and trade agreements, efforts are being made to homogenise countries’ internal legislation to create a new framework that positively favours economic and social aspects; however, at the same time, criminal organisations are emerging that use loopholes to increase money laundering.

In this sense, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, through the Financial Investigations Unit, is developing and favouring numerous cooperation and collaboration actions among the country’s various financial institutions, strengthening the mechanisms aimed at preventing money laundering, such as preparing financial intelligence reports, reporting suspicious transactions and referring them to the judicial authorities if they find indications that a crime has been committed.

The institutional effort that they are putting in must be translated, in the next few years, into improving results in relation to obtaining a greater number of convictions and increasing the financial assets and resources confiscated due to money laundering, which can then be reused to continue strengthening structures to prevent this type of crime.

The European project to support Bolivian institutions in the fight against drug trafficking and related crimes, which is funded by the European Union and managed by FIIAPP, places special emphasis on the issue of money laundering. In the two years we have been working on the project, the focus has been on strengthening three main aspects.

On the one hand, we have sought to train the Bolivian Police, the Financial Investigation Unit, the Public Ministry and the Ministry of Justice through training courses in money laundering, seizure of assets, analysis of financial intelligence and financial cybercrime; we have also proposed future specialisation modules in money laundering for the Bolivian School of Judges and Prosecutors.

In addition, we have focused on strengthening inter-institutional coordination and international cooperation by establishing collaboration, support and advice channels and creating spaces of understanding between institutions that develop functions aimed at the prevention and investigation of money laundering.

Finally, we have given support and assistance to help pass the fourth round of the Financial Action Task Force of Latin America (Gafilat) Mutual Evaluation, which will take place in Bolivia in the second half of 2020.

We must also remember that the FATF Recommendations include the objectives of setting standards and promoting the effective implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures to combat money laundering, the financing of terrorism and other threats related to the integrity of the international financial system.

Whether or not this Mutual Evaluation is passed will depend to a large extent on whether the Bolivian State can continue to stay off the famous black or grey lists composed of states that do not comply and do not commit themselves to establishing measures to prevent money laundering.

In 2019, the project will remain active and committed to all actions that strengthen public policies carried out in Bolivia to combat money laundering.

Today, international judicial cooperation is a necessity for all countries. In particular, if we talk about the European system, we have gone from cooperation between states to cooperation between judges of states, without the need to go through a centralised control system of administrative authorities. In that regard, in Europe, we therefore have extensive experience based on a principle of integration.

With the objective of developing this integration, at EL PAcCTO—a project financed by the European Union and managed by FIIAPP, and in collaboration with the Italo-Latin American Institute and the Camões Institute of Portugal—we work to strengthen effective judicial cooperation with Latin America. The region is full of professionals—true professionals, for that matter—who work in their respective countries and who are highly competent. However, the structures they have for working in international judicial cooperation remain very dependent on cooperation between states. At EL PAcCTO, we can go as far as the will of the states determines, since it is an on-demand project.

In any case, we are making a very strong commitment to facilitating cooperation systems, by increasing the acts of cooperation available to them. It is not about allowing them to help foreign judges or foreign prosecutors, but about giving them the best conditions to request help abroad: to open their borders to the world in order to receive information and investigate the crimes they are dealing with.

We are working through several lines: for example, we are facilitating an update of international cooperation laws to give them access to the new techniques that inevitably arrive. The truth is that crime advances so fast, money moves so fast, and the perpetrators of crimes cross borders so quickly, that any attempt to continue with a scheme based on cooperation between states typical of the mid-twentieth century leads to few results.

Organised crime requires being very up-to-date, and to achieve this, picking up the pace is very important. For this reason, we are working on the creation of joint investigation teams and other innovative cooperation techniques between states, and also in relation to cybercrime, because the existing forms of cooperation in this area, such as instant contacts between the state police and fiscal authorities, are in need of an update.

We are also establishing a line of work that is being used by different nations to facilitate computer technical systems. In this way, the system users, i.e. the prosecutor or the policeman who is on the last corner of the state border, will have the mechanisms to not only get the information, but also the facility to prepare cooperation events with other states. All of this will be made simple, facilitating the work of all parties and ultimately promoting greater international cooperation between them.

In short, EL PAcCTO is not based on training courses or on knowledge updates; instead we seek to have an effect which is as direct and practical as possible and, therefore, to learn by doing but also and, above all, by improving structures, systems and techniques.