AMLA and the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) have today signed a Working Arrangement to strengthen cooperation and information exchange between the two bodies, supporting their work against money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud and corruption.
The Working Arrangement sets out a framework for cooperation and the exchange of operational and strategic information, including criminal patterns, emerging trends, risk indicators and crime prevention methods. These exchanges will help the two bodies identify links between their work and draw on each other’s expertise.
The arrangement also allows OLAF to contribute its anti-fraud expertise to joint analyses coordinated by AMLA, where relevant to OLAF’s mandate and subject to the consent of the participating Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs). This will support joint operational analysis of money laundering related to fraud involving EU funds.
It also provides for information available in the context of joint analyses to be cross-checked against information made available by OLAF, helping to identify potential matches at an early stage.
By bringing together specialised expertise and intelligence, this arrangement ensures a faster, more coordinated EU response to complex financial crimes, as part of the cooperation framework set out in Article 94 of the AMLA Regulation and in line with the provisions of OLAF’s Regulation.
Criminals do not respect institutional boundaries, and neither can our response. By combining our expertise and information, we make the EU’s financial system harder to abuse and easier to protect.
This Working Arrangement is an important step towards stronger day-to-day cooperation between AMLA, OLAF and the Financial Intelligence Units of Member States. These units hold valuable financial information, including banking and cash transactions, which could trigger OLAF investigations or support ongoing cases. By bringing this intelligence together with OLAF’s expertise, we can make investigations into fraud involving EU funds more thorough and faster. Our goal is to achieve better results, including increased recoveries and with that, to further strengthen the protection of the EU’s financial interests.
The Working Arrangement and accompanying Press Release can be viewed at the links below:
AMLA and OLAF: Working Arrangement on Cooperation
Press Release - AMLA and OLAF: Working Arrangement on Cooperation
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amla [dot] europa [dot] eu (media[at]amla[dot]europa[dot]eu) or olaf-mediaec [dot] europa [dot] eu (olaf-media[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu).