On July 26, within the framework of the XLV Plenary Session of GAFILAT (Financial Action Task Force of Latin America) being held in Quito, Ecuador, from July 25 to 29, the Working Group on Financial and Asset Investigation promoted by the European Union’s COPOLAD III Program was officially launched.
The fight against money laundering as a crime related to drug trafficking is also one of the lines of work of the COPOLAD III through the International Italo-Latin American Organization (IILA).
This working group will focus on new technologies in the fight against illicit money laundering, suspicious transactions, analysis techniques and the use of open sources. The objective of this group is to strengthen the exchange of information between Financial Investigation Units at the regional and bi-regional levels, in order to reinforce strategies that target the finances and assets of criminal organizations as the most effective way to reduce their power and their capacity to generate economic, political and social influence.
On behalf of IILA, Lieutenant Colonel Alessandro Loddo, from the Central Directorate of the Anti-Drug Services (Italian Ministry of the Interior) and COPOLAD III program’s main expert, participated in the presentation of the Working Group. José Rodrigo Sirvent Bravo Ahuja, from Mexico’s Financial Investigation Unit, and Ramón Armas Castillo, from Ecuador’s Financial and Economic Analysis Unit, also participated as representatives of the countries coordinating the Working Group on Financial and Asset Investigation.
So far, nine countries have joined this working group: the two coordinating countries plus Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Peru and Uruguay.
GAFILAT is a regionally based intergovernmental organization that brings together 18 countries from South America, Central America and North America and was created to prevent and combat money laundering through a commitment to continuously improve national policies and deepen the various cooperation mechanisms among member countries.
