„No single country can fight international financial crime alone“
This quote from the welcoming remarks of Ruta Carik, Lithuanian Vice Minister of Finance on the Annual Summit of the Global Coalition to Fight Financial Crime had been repeated and confirmed throughout the conference.
It was quite assuring to hear Giles Thomson, President at the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), state that FATF recognises the relative lack of demonstrable outcome from the huge efforts taken to fight money laundering and terrorist financing and call for a shift in supervisory culture to enable a switch from low risk focus on high risk cases. I am afraid that as long as there is personal liability for missing a report, such shift will not come …
Elzbieta Franków-Jaskiewicz (Egmont Group) voiced support for data matching initiatives, calling for creating collective understanding rather than mere information sharing. „We must strengthen trust“
Michael Matossian (MENA FCCG) raised the important question, if we are translating what we know into better decisions and more meaningful collective action. He highlighted the importance to exercising sound judgement and having the courage to act. He also asked if incentives are correctly set: "What gets measures influences behavior". Please find his proposed self assessment tool here: https://abc.menafccg.com/questionnaire/login
A bit shocking for a number of participants was Kurban Babayev's security warning for potential drone alarm in Vilnius … I admit that also I had not been aware that this actually happens in Lithuania!
It was great to see that the clash between privacy and AML regulation was topic on a number of panels. I truly enjoyed Vivienne Artz moderating my related panel with Maria Raffaella Assetta (DG FISMA EU Commission), Ausra Spakauskiene and Tom Barbereau alongside Louise Russell-Prywata, permitting me to share my critical view on our current AML system.
There also was an interesting OSCE breakout session about Blockchain Evidence in Criminal Proceedings: from Intelligence to Courtroom-Admissible Evidence opened by Ralf Ernst and moderated by Stanislava Milankov, with Lenche Ristoska (thank you for sharing your personal story!), Claudia Pina (Central Court for Criminal Investigation), and closing remarks by Zurab Sanikidze. We will pick up precisely this topic on our upcoming DARTE Munich 2.0 session – if you are in Munich on Thursday next week, reach out to join us there!
It was great to see Michal Gromek and Dimitrij Gede to take the Digital Asset Task Force one step further to becoming a „cryptocurrency compliance emergency room“.
I look forward to co-organise a hackathon with the GCFFC in November in Berlin!
