OSCE and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime course highlights importance of financial intelligence in preventing and countering terrorism

How to undertake financial investigation to effectively cut off terrorism financing channels was the focus of a three-day training course for experts from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), which concluded on 18 November 2021. The OSCE and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in co-operation with the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina organized the course.

Twenty participants from BiH took part in the training course, which is part of a comprehensive, progressively advanced training programme on countering the financing of terrorism (CFT), and is implemented jointly by the OSCE Transnational Threats Department and UNODC.

Seven local trainers, who participated in the OSCE and UNODC train-the-trainer course, and international experts, delivered the course to fellow experts from the Ministry of Security of BiH, the BiH Prosecutor’s Office, the State Investigation and Protection Agency, the Ministry of Interior of the Federation of BiH, the Ministry of Interior of Republika Srpska and Brčko District Police.

Participants learned about analytical techniques and methods that can be applied for the successful conduct of proactive and reactive financial investigations.

The course represents the second module of the OSCE-UNODC training programme, which aims to build up BiH’s CFT framework and increase the country’s capacity to detect and combat terrorist financing and strengthen compliance with international commitments and standards in this area.   

The course was organized with the financial support of the United States and Italy.