Providing operational responses to the fight of financial crimes: information exchange and police cooperation
The regional project “Countering Serious Crime in the Western Balkans” has supported the activity “On the Job Mentoring and Advising on Financial Investigations” that has gathered 16 senior law enforcement officers from Kosovo* Police and Kosovo Financial Investigation Unit in Rome, Italy.
The aim of this activity was to enable Kosovo law enforcement officers to exchange techniques, methods and police measures that might be undertaken in order to tackle the sensitive cases of financial investigations, transnational organized crime, digital/cybercrime and mafia-related crime through the cutting-edge approach of on the job mentoring and advising.
Complex investigations of transnational organized crime with the focus in the various aspects of financial crimes as money laundering, fraud, cybercrime, terrorist financing, bribery and corruption have been analyzed jointly to identify the best and the most useful operational police responses that might lead to successful completion of these investigations. Working together in concrete cases, this exchange of experiences has enabled police officers to identify also investigative needs that need prompt and international-cooperation related comeback in a fragile landscape of transnational organized crime that has perceived an upward trend due to various social movements that have affected the area of the Western Balkans and European Union. As a success story of operational cooperation in international scale has been highlighted also the project ONNET and antimafia operational network @ON emphasizing all the operational results over the years.
The activity was completed with the ascertainment and checks in Italian police national and international police databases (I-24, SIENA, SIRENE, SIS) to the Operational Centre of Investigative Directorate of Antimafia, International Operations Room of the Central Directorate of Criminal Police and Centre of Operations for Cybercrime in order to make the best use of sophisticated software in the successful completion of investigations in financial crimes.
This mentoring on the job and advising activity has served to provide an exchange of operational experience and a wide range of knowledge related to the technological tools to Kosovo Police and Financial Intelligence Unit in order to foster efficient, in-depth and successful financial investigations.
*This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR
1244/1999 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.
