Egmont Centre of FIU Excellence and Leadership (ECOFEL II)

Money laundering and the financing of terrorism pose a serious threat to the international financial system. A key institution in the fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) in every country is the FIU. FIUs are the critical link between the financial system and law enforcement agencies. They are well positioned to identify and trace illicit financial flows and proceeds of crime. ECOFEL supports the building up of capacities at FIUs in order to strenghten the measures on AML/CFT at the national and international level.

Strengthen Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) in their contribution to national and international efforts on AML/CFT. ECOFEL seeks to advance the quest for enhancing the FIUs' role by providing support to the development and deepening of the autonomy, effectivity and innovation at FIUs. With support to ECOFEL, SECO is contributing to a more efficient implementation of AML/CFT measures globally.

Improve operational capacity of FIU’s to receive/deliver quality products

Strengthen FIU operational independence and autonomy

Increase international cooperation

Improve understanding of global strategic money laundering / terrorism financing landscape and financial intelligence landscape

Resultados previstos:  

Regional and national workshops on AML/CFT topics

E-learning courses on AML/CFT topics (operational and strategic analysis)

Organize and enable FIU-to-FIU secondments

Organize and conduct coachings and mentorings

Diagnostic missions and individual targeted assistance to FIUs

Legal reviews

Organize conferences, roundtables and other similar events

Support and enable International Financial Intelligence Taskforces

Research or guidance papers

Resultados de las fases anteriores:  

In Phase I, ECOFEL developed 17 courses with almost 9'000 registered users on it’s E-learning website. Topics include "Introduction to Virtual Assets", "FIU-LEA Cooperation", "Terrorist Financing" and "Professional Money Laundering".

There are a number of success stories in different regions of ECOFEL-supported International Financial Intelligence Taskforces (IFITs):

- in African countries several individuals who belong to terrorist groups were identified. A signifianct number of them were arrested.

- in Eastern Europe the grand corruption-related IFIT helped identify stolen assets in a couple of jurisdictions, including two different EG regions, which led to a freezing of around 250 million US dollars and the initiation of an asset recovery process in these jurisdictions.