OSCE-supported Balkan Asset Management Interagency Network holds joint training course on management of companies

On 8 and 9 June 2021, the Balkan Asset Management Interagency Network (BAMIN) conducted its first joint training course for 2021 focused on the management of companies. The training course, supported by the OSCE, aimed at improving the technical competencies of BAMIN members to manage confiscated assets in a cost-effective way while also enhancing regional and international co-operation.

Denise Mazzolani, co-manager of the project and Deputy Head of the Strategic Police Matters Unit at the OSCE, opened the course by highlighting OSCE efforts to promote the seizure and management of assets from organized crime groups. She noted that networks such as BAMIN should be replicated in other regions and highlighted the importance of ensuring the continuity of BAMIN’s work.

Through an interactive scenario-based approach, the two-day course aimed at facilitating the exchange of best practices between participating jurisdictions and enhancing cross-agency co-operation, while also identifying their limitations, gaps and challenges. Representatives of asset management offices and other relevant institutions from fifteen jurisdictions participated in the training course.

BAMIN is a network of practitioners working in asset management within their respective jurisdictions. The network’s core members represent jurisdictions from the Western Balkans; however, observer and associate members from other countries are part of the network as well. The OSCE supports BAMIN through an extra-budgetary project on asset recovery in South-Eastern Europe funded by the United States Department of State, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy.