AKIPRESS.COM - An OSCE-supported training seminar for some 40 law enforcement officials on investigating, freezing and recovering stolen assets, including those repatriated abroad, began October 24 in Astana, OSCE said.

During the five-day event experts from Belgium, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Israel, Lithuania and the United Kingdom as well as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) will conduct theoretical and practical exercises on financial intelligence sources, the financial examination of large data and analysing corporate documentation. The participants - analysts, investigators and prosecutors - will also learn how to draft and handle financial intelligence and international mutual legal assistance requests, thereby increasing their capacity to freeze and to successfully recover illegally appropriated proceeds.

“Without professional financial investigations, illegally procured assets cannot be returned,” said Deputy Prosecutor General Andrey Kravchenko. “We’re teaching much more than the participants of this workshop as we will identify and prepare nine national coaches among them who will continue to train investigators and prosecutors at the Law Enforcement Agencies Academy on investigating financial crimes and the return of assets.”

The training seminar is co-organized by the OSCE Programme Office in Astana in close co-operation with the Prosecutor General's Office, the Academy of Law Enforcement Agencies under the Prosecutor General’s Office, the UNODC and the United States Embassy in Kazakhstan.

Colin McCullough, Officer-in-Charge of the OSCE Programme Office in Astana said: “When a state recovers assets gained through money laundering, it is not only ensuring that justice is served, but countering the affiliated activities of organized criminal groups in the process.” He noted that this requires considerable co-operation with partner countries as well as continuous vigilance of what methods are used in perpetrating these crimes.

This event builds on the efforts of the Office’s multi-year activities in assisting the host country in the fields of good governance, anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism.