Egmont Finance Intelligence Unit Group

In June, 1995 Brussels (Belgium) has seen a meeting of representatives of 24 countries and some international bodies including FATF, Interpol, Europol, European Commission, World customs organization, etc. They made a decision on creation of informal association of the national departments carrying out functions of financial intelligence. This association was decided to be called as the Egmont Finance Intelligence Unit Group (under the name of the palace of Egmont-Arenberg where its first session took place). Egmont Group was not initially an international organization as it had not been based on the contract and had no constantly operating working bodies, headquarters and own budget. The choice of an informal format had been aimed at the creation of the dynamical and non-bureaucratic structure uniting professionals-experts in interests of development of the international cooperation in the sphere with money-laundering.

According to the Statement of the purposes, accepted on June, 24th, 1997 in Madrid, the primary goals of Egmont Group are assistance to creation of new PFR and development of cooperation between them. The Group copes quite successfully with these problems. So, in June, 2005, 10 years after the creation of Egmont Group, the number of its members exceeded 100 FIU. Thus all FIU-members of the Group experienced selection procedure on conformity to the established criteria and have powers, material and personnel resources necessary for effective functioning at national and international levels.

Egmont Group purpose is to provide operative information interchange with other members of this group. At the moment it includes 116 countries of the world. Though money-laundering was originally in the centre of attention of FIU Egmont Group, FIU also plays the important role in the international efforts on struggle against terrorism financing. The revealed financial information which FIU now receive, analyze and transfer further, appeared to be invaluable source of data for those national departments that are engaged in investigations concerning terrorism financing. To execute obligatory international standards many countries have already brought or are in the process of entering amendments into the internal legislation to include terrorism financing as a separate crime in the field of FIU activity.

Detailed information you can find on the official site of the Egmont (www.egmontgroup.org)