The Council of Europe Economic Crime and Cooperation Division (ECCD) is supporting Bulgarian Financial Intelligence Directorate under the State Agency for National Security (FID-SANS – Bulgarian Financial Intelligence Unit) with strengthening their anti-money laundering and countering the terrorist financing (AML/CFT) capacities in conducting operational and strategic analysis. In this regard, following a two-day training on operation analysis, the ECCD organised another capacity-building activity, focused on the development of strategic analysis products.
The training was organised in cooperation with the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) of Malta, which nominated two experts to share their practical experience and good practices with Bulgarian counterparts. The training was kicked-off by a presentation of the analytical software solution, where FIAU representatives shared their experience as regards the customisation and daily use of analytical software for the purposes of operational and strategic analysis.
In the follow-up sessions, participants had the opportunity to enhance their knowledge as regards developing different types of strategic analysis products, including trends, typologies and strategic analysis of transactions and other information received by the FIU. A strong emphasis was also put on the need of exchanging information with other competent authorities.
The FIAU experts provided examples of completed strategic analysis products with a view of different purposes and types of recipients. Furthermore, participants discussed the overall importance of strategic analysis products’ dissemination. Throughout the training sessions, experts emphasised the importance of collecting granular and comprehensive statistics in a manner that they could be easily extracted, processed and presented.
The event aimed at further supporting Bulgarian authorities with addressing recommendations provided in the Fifth Round MONEYVAL Mutual Evaluation Report of Bulgaria, ensuring the continuity of technical assistance provided by the Economic Crime and Cooperation Division of the Council of Europe to Bulgarian competent authorities.