2017 Annual Police Experts Meeting

Financial gains are the main incentive of most types of serious and organized crime. This applies for example to illicit drugs production and trafficking, trafficking in human beings and smuggling of migrants, child sexual exploitation, counterfeiting and fraud, as well as all financial and economic crime.

Academia, international organizations and law enforcement agencies agree that the most effective and sustainable way to disrupt or dismantle serious and organized criminal activities is to strip the criminal groups and networks of their proceeds, i.e. to confiscate the revenues and the illegally obtained criminal assets. Yet, according to a recent research, only 1.2% of illicit proceeds are confiscated in the EU, leaving 98.8% at the disposal of criminals, criminal groups and criminal networks (Europol, Criminal Assets Recovery in the EU, 2016: 4).

This year’s APEM will particularly address and seek to answer the following key questions:

• Why is only such a small fragment of crime proceeds confiscated?
• What can be done to strengthen the most effective criminal justice systems’ measures against criminal activities, namely to confiscate the criminal proceeds?

The aim of the 2017 APEM is to introduce and discuss legislative instruments, co-operation mechanisms, multi-disciplinary/-agency approaches and law enforcement good practice examples, for the purpose of strengthening OSCE participating States efforts in countering crime and disrupting criminal networks through confiscating criminal proceeds and recovering criminal assets.

After a formal opening and welcoming remarks, the meeting will be divided into three main sessions. The first session will introduce the state of play, the scope of “the problem”, the main relevant international policy instruments and global actors involved in the Meeting’s subject matter. The second session will explore and discuss international and regional cooperation mechanisms and examples of national organizational structures, especially focusing on multi-agency approaches to seizing and confiscating criminal proceeds. In the third session, practical ways to disrupt criminal networks will be discussed, through introducing and examining real cases and operations from a law enforcement and prosecution perspective.

All participants are kindly requested to fill in the attached registration form and send it to Elke.Lidarik@osce.org, no later than 8 September 2017.