News and press releases

From June 18 to 20, the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities organized a workshop titled "Navigating the Virtual Asset Landscape" in Warsaw, Poland. The workshop, which was hosted by the Ministry of Finance of Poland, targeted Ukrainian supervisory

Cryptocurrencies and other virtual assets can present a wide range of risks, including but not limited to money laundering, terrorist financing, and fraud. To strengthen Armenia’s crypto-related crime investigation capacities, the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities (OCEEA), in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), gathered 23 representatives from the public sector in Yerevan from 12 to 14 June for a targeted training session to foster their expertise in this area.

On 28 and 29 May, the Heads of Asset Management Agencies from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Moldova, North Macedonia and Ukraine gathered in Skopje, North Macedonia for a meeting of the Steering Group of the Balkan Asset Management Interagency Network (BAMIN).

A regional conference on “Effective strategies for recovering stolen assets; management and disposal of seized, confiscated and returned assets and current issues related to crypto assets in the context of asset recovery” took place in Tashkent on 20-21 May. The event convened delegations from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and the host country, Uzbekistan, and was co-hosted by the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities Economic Governance Unit (OCEEA/EGU), the Transnational Threats Department Strategic Police Matters Unit (TNTD/SPMU) and the UNODC Regional Office for Central Asia.

As part of its ongoing efforts to empower women in the energy transition, the OSCE organized a Training of Trainers (ToT) on how to become effective mentors. The event took place on 14 May in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and was organized in partnership with the Global Women’s Network for the Energy Transition (GWNET).

From 21 to 24 May, the OSCE Secretariat, in co-operation with the OSCE Presence in Albania, held the South-Eastern Europe Youth Dialogue Forum on Youth Crime Prevention in Durrës, Albania. The Forum gathered around 20 young people from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia to build confidence and trust among youth in the region.

Climate change poses significant challenges for energy systems across the OSCE area. To help decision-makers and energy stakeholders build resilience, on 8 and 9 May 2024 in Vienna, the OSCE hosted the workshop “Building Climate-Resilient Energy Systems in the OSCE region”. Gathering over 50 experts from 12 different countries representing Central Asia, Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, and the Mediterranean, the workshop served as a platform to present the findings of the report assessing climate change risks to energy sectors and preparedness levels of the beneficiary countries, and to jointly identify ways forward.