OSCE and partners help strengthening corruption investigation capacities of Mongolia

ULAANBAATAR, 22 September 2017 – A two-day national workshop, followed by a series of bilateral consultations on Cross-Border Co-operation against Corruption and Money Laundering, between officials from Mongolia and international experts from the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office and Interpol, concluded today in Ulaanbaatar.

The workshop, which was co-organized by the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities and the Independent Authority Against Corruption (IAAC) in Mongolia, in the framework of an ongoing OSCE-led technical assistance project, gathered some 70 participants from the IAAC, the financial intelligence unit, the prosecutor general’s office, the general police authority, the Central Bank and financial institutions.

“Stolen public assets rarely stay within the country of origin, instead they are laundered using a complex system of legal arrangements aimed at moving these criminal assets across the globe, often in off-shore bank accounts,” said Roel Janssens, Economic Adviser at the OSCE Secretariat and project manager. “Addressing this complex problem requires a high level of co-ordination and co-operation among financial investigation, judicial and law enforcement authorities, both at domestic and international levels.”

Participants discussed links between corruption and money laundering, ways to tackle cross-border movements of proceeds of corruption, domestic co-ordination in identifying, tracing and recovering illicit assets and use of legal persons and other legal arrangements to conceal criminal assets.

Enkhjargal Khurselsukh, IAAC Commissioner General, said: “In these times of globalization, countries cannot fight corruption in isolation. In order to be successful we need to develop closer partnerships with and learn from the experiences of our counterparts in other jurisdictions and partners in international organizations.”

Participants were also introduced to the deployment of joint task force approaches and joint investigative teams as well as to good practices for the drafting of Mutual Legal Assistance requests and the use of formal and informal platforms and networks to facilitate co-operation in the fight against financial crime and money laundering. 

The workshop received funding support from Austria and Germany.