A ceremony of signing the inter-departmental agreements took place within the framework of the Egmont Group plenary week in St. Petersburg. The agreements will help the FIUs of these states improve exchange of information to identify suspicious financial transactions.
The Department of Financial Monitoring of Belarus along with 11 financial intelligence units was awarded certificates for active contribution to the effort to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. This decision was taken following the contest in which each country presented the analytical materials describing a laundering scheme.
The plenary meeting of the Egmont Group was attended by more than 400 representatives of the financial intelligence units from more than 100 countries, members of international organizations. Attending the meeting was also a delegation of the Department of Financial Monitoring of the State Control Committee of Belarus headed by Director Alexander Maksimenko.
The meeting discussed the most pressing issues of combating money laundering, mass marketing frauds, ways of improving the information exchange, the use of money-laundering index, etc.
In 2007 the Department of Financial Monitoring of the State Control Committee of Belarus joined the Egmont Group, which is an informal association established by financial intelligence units to support the national programs against money laundering, to ensure rapid exchange of financial intelligence information, expertise and training. At present, the Egmont Group of financial intelligence units includes 131 countries.
According to the SCC, in H1 2012, the Department of Financial Monitoring sent 1,119 communications to law enforcement of Belarus, financial intelligence units of foreign states reporting suspicious financial transactions. The use of this information helped the law enforcement and financial watchdogs of the country recover about Br18.7 billion. Some 148 criminal cases were opened.
