Heads of Finance Investigation Authorities - Director of Finance Police Department of the State Revenue Service of Latvia Kaspars Čerņeckis, Head of Investigation Department of Estonian Tax and Customs Board Rene Kanniste and Director of Lithuanian Finance Crime Investigation Service Vitalijus Gailius, during the meeting on 17 September 2010 discussed current issues in the sphere of finance crime combating in the Baltic Region, agreed to meet regularly at least once a year and facilitate the mutual information exchange, in order to enable faster activity stopping of groups of money launderers in the Baltic region.

During the meeting organized crime trends and changes in the methods applied in crime commitment were discussed. The heads of all three Baltic states finance investigation authorities agreed that criminal schemes became more complicated, its regional scale expanded - increasingly more EU countries and third countries are being involved into criminal groups apart from the Baltic states.

As reported earlier the organizers of criminal schemes became more refined. As they are making more criminal schemes and attract professionals - accountants, lawyers, analysts - the schemes can be created at a greater regional scale. Often the money is transferred through one or several foreign countries. At one of the scheme stages while concluding transactions with bogus companies, the ownership of financial resources is being changed. As a result financial resources return back already laundered.

Taking into account the above mentioned mutual cooperation and intelligence and investigation information exchange is of great importance in disclosure and stopping of criminal schemes, therefore the heads of finance crime investigation authorities of the Baltic states agreed to meet at least once a year to discuss the actual issues on mutual cooperation and also agreed on methods of specific operative information exchange for faster activity stopping of group of money launderers.

During the meeting the heads of of finance crime investigation authorities of the Baltic states also discussed the results of the mutual cooperation. For example, on 6 March 2008 SRS Finance Police Department managed to disclose and stop the activity of major group of money launderers, which operated in the territory of Latvia and Estonia. During the pre-court investigation the investigators of the SRS Finance Police Department interrogated the persons involved into the process going to Estonia themselves, and also received help from the Estonian colleagues. As a result SRS Finance Police Department on 18 September 2009 sent to Prosecutor’s office of Organised Crime and Other Sectors two criminal procedures on seven persons’ tax evasion in the amount of 1,45 million lats and the legalization of proceeds from crime in the amount of 2,1 million lats. In the nearest future it is planned to send two more criminal procedures for prosecution commencement.

In the end of 2008 law enforcement institutions of Latvia and Estonia stopped the activity of a criminal scheme created in cooperation of various Latvian criminal groups with Estonian criminal group. The mentioned groups managed to legalize 13 million Euros in the territory of Estonia. In total in Latvia and Estonia within the commenced criminal procedures the 40 searches were conducted at the legal addresses of the involved companies, addresses of officials’ and persons involved and their automobiles. The pre-court investigation of one of the criminal procedures commenced in Latvia was finished and the procedure was sent to Prosecutor’s office of Organised Crime and Other Sectors in order to commence the criminal prosecution of six persons for tax evasion and damage caused to the state budget in the amount of 1,5 million lats and fraud. Within the procedure 7,1 thousand lats and 28,4 thousand lats were deemed illegal. The second procedure is under investigation.

In the first part of this year the close cooperation with the Lithuanian authority was established while checking the money laundering channel used by two of the criminal groups detained by SRS Finance Police Department this year. As reported earlier, on 3 and 4 June 2010 detained the participants of criminal group when 190 thousand lats were transported and given to orderer. Another group stopped by SRS Finance Police Department on 16 June 2010, dealt with large scale VAT fraud and according to initial information had 4,5 million lats turnover and evaded from VAT payment, caused a 785 thousand lats damage to the state budget.

During the meeting with the heads of all three Baltic states finance investigation authorities discussed reorganization and its results in their authorities. During last three years all three Baltic states finance investigation authorities experienced the reorganization with the aim to review the functions of the authority and to optimize its work under crisis.

                                        Number of requests for the legal assistance

17.09.2010

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