Employees of the Financial Monitoring Department under the National Bank of Tajikistan took part in the regional training of the Council of Europe on criminal investigations of money laundering and terrorist financing using virtual assets on June 12-13, 2024 in Astana, Republic of Kazakhstan. This event was organized by the Council of Europe within the framework of the project “Promoting Transparency and Action against Economic Crime in Central Asia” (CA TAEC) for law enforcement and financial intelligence units of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
29 investigators, prosecutors and analysts from LEAs and FIUs attended the training, who improved their skills in conducting investigations and prosecutions of ML/TF cases with illegal use of VAs. Participants enhanced knowledge on the abuse of (VAs) for illicit purposes and international standards on VAs, as well as improved their understanding of the financial investigation as a process and as a multi-stakeholder endeavour including interagency and international co-operation, learned tools and methods to investigate VAs, improved their knowledge and skills by learning procedures, good practice and challenges in seizing, freezing and confiscating VAs and ensure their efficient management.
Participants also received informed about the role of each institution in investigations by working on specific case studies, which allowed them to understand different stages of gathering evidences, planning and preparation required for potential seizure of VAs, and the process to be undertaken when recovering/storing and realising virtual currencies. Investigators learned special methods of dialogue and cooperation between law enforcement and cryptocurrency exchanges.
It should be noted that in order to increase the effectiveness of the anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism in the framework of technical assistance from the Council of Europe, the Financial Monitoring Department under the National Bank of Tajikistan was provided access to a software product for the analyzing blockchain transactions.