NEW DELHI, Nov 1:
Financial intelligence units of the South Asian region will meet in the capital tomorrow to work out the ways and means to disrupt the transnational flows of money between the drug cartels, human traffickers, gangsters and terrorists.
The conference, being organised by India at the behest of UN Office on Drugs and Crime(UNODC), will be inaugurated Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The three-day international conference ‘Networking the Networks’ will deal with issues of illicit financial flows from drugs, human trafficking and tax fraud, etc, and will seek to establish regional coordination mechanism for intelligence sharing in criminal matters.
The proposal to hold the ‘Networking the Networks’ meeting in India was agreed during the last visit of the Executive Director, UNODC to India on December 3, 2014 and his meeting with the Revenue Secretary.
Subsequently, the Executive Director, UNODC also met Mr Jaitley and expressed his appreciation for concurring to hold the international conference in India. He also reaffirmed UNODC?s readiness to further extend support to India and the region in countering trans-national organised crime and promoting drug prevention, treatment and care among vulnerable population groups.
The UNODC suggested that India could host a ‘Networking the Networks’ event on illicit money flows involving financial intelligence units from the region and beyond as well as establish a regional coordination mechanism for intelligence sharing in criminal matters.
This conference is relevant in the context that South Asia region is vulnerable to the illicit financial flows from drugs, human trafficking, tax fraud etc. Informal money transfer systems are also popular in the world and can be easily misused by the criminal networks for the transfer of crime proceeds, as well as for terror financing.
One of the ways to effectively combat the criminal networks is to disrupt their financial flows. But the criminal networks are of transnational nature and money movements are executed very fast. So to combat these criminal networks and their illicit financial flows, law enforcement agencies need fast operational cooperation with their foreign partners, and capacities to deal with the financial crimes. Three different regional organisations for law enforcement cooperation ‘Central Asian Regional Information and Coordination Center (CARICC), Southeast European Law Enforcement Center (SELEC)’ are already working in this direction. But their capacities are not fully utilised for tracing of illicit financial flows.
The conference will target two goals, one, to connect the existing international and regional law enforcement cooperation centres to enable fast inter-regional cooperation, and two, to use the capacities of these networks to disrupt organised crime and the illicit financial flows related to it through the exchange of intelligence and providing platform for coordination of joint and parallel operations.
The meeting will bring together law enforcement senior officials, as well as representatives of the existing global networks and successful regional networks from other regions, who can share their experience on combating illicit financial flows.
The meeting will also help to identify the best practices of the existing international organisations and regional platforms for fast cooperation on illicit financial flows and capacity building. These practices will cover a wide range of issues: organisation and set-up of regional networks, connection between various networks, new methodologies to disrupt illicit financial flows, capacity building, use of IT tools, international and inter-agency cooperation.
Participants will also produce recommendations on best practices and solutions which can be applied to the nascent South Asia Regional Information and Coordination Center (SARICC). The proposal for creation of regional platform for exchange of information and intelligence on drug trafficking and related matters such as money laundering etc., with India in the lead, for the South Asian region was discussed during the visit of Executive Director of UNODC.
This platform would initially comprise the founding members Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka besides India, and later on would be open to inclusion of other countries and international organisation as decided by the founding members, based on shared concerns.
Because of its geographical position sandwiched between two of the major illicit opium and heroin producing regions of the world (Afghanistan to our North West and Myanmar to our East) India has been a victim of drug trafficking originating in these countries for several years.
During the recent visit of the Executive Director of the UNODC to India, he expressed the expectation that India should emerge as the leading player in the area of anti-drug trafficking and other related transnational organised crimes, not only in this region but also beyond especially in view of the fact of increase in illicit poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and Myanmar and manufacture of synthetic drugs in Myanmar. He was keen to have discussions at the strategic level in India as regards the initiatives which India could take in this matter. (UNI)
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