The Egmont Group was founded back in 1995 by a small amount of national agencies, namely CTIF-CFI (Belgium) and FinCEN (US). Nowadays it represents a global financial network with more than 150 members worldwide, such as FINTRAC, the UK Financial Intelligence Unit, FinCEN.
The role of the Egmont Group is to prevent financial crimes by providing a stable communication between FIUs (i.e. members) in order to support their governments against money laundering, bribery, tax evasion, etc. However the Group’s first and foremost priority is to fight against terrorist financing. To establish a global network, the Egmont Group created Egmont Secure Web (ESW) providing connection and sharing intelligence information on the AML developments between members.
The Egmont Group prioritises high standard maintenance to ensure vital AML compliance among the units. The main instrument for that is annual intersessional meetings with the Egmont Committee, that consists of five Working Groups and addresses administrative and operational issues such as:
- All legal aspects within the Egmont Group;
- An effective communication for members and provision of proper training for FIUs if needed;
- An approval or disapproval of potential FIUs candidate to expand the Egmont Group global network;
- Cooperation between the divisions and the development of studies on a variety of subjects that may be helpful for law enforcement (KYC/AML);
- Improvements on technical assistance regarding IT systems encouraging effective information sharing among The Egmont members.
The Egmont Group creates a new Strategic Plan once in 3 years. In the their 2018-2021 Strategic Plan the Egmont Group has stated a new set of higher goals for the upcoming years:
Expand the members’ field of knowledge on current financial change;
Develop new partnerships, especially in Asian and African regions;
Strengthen members’ capability by promoting leadership through The Egmont Centre of FIU Excellence and Leadership (ECOFEL), etc.
For now, the Egmont Group is the only organization engaging in such a global process uniting countries all over the world to prevent terrorist financing and other financial crimes.
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