Bangkok, 17 Apr 2007 – Global Financial Crime Congress calls for synergies between public, private sectors

At the four-day event, the fourth of its kind and the first one co-organized by the Interpol and the UNODC, officials of the agencies and delegates from member countries are to discuss progress and new ideas on collaborative mechanisms to fight against money laundering, terrorism financing, corruption and high- tech crimes, among others.

Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble at the opening ceremony stressed that financial crime poses a serious national and security threat and provides the fuel for drug dealers, terrorists, illegal arms dealers, corrupt officials and others to operate and expand their criminal enterprises, while advances in transportation, information technologies have facilitated more sophisticated ones.

Talking about corruption, which has indisputable interrelation with financial crime, Noble said the Interpol has been increasingly active in this crime area in recent years and has in this March decided to add corruption as one of its sixth priority crime area of its work.

The Interpol is also raising fund to establish the world's first “Global Anti-corruption Academy,” which aims to provide training, education and technical assistance to member countries on combating corruption, and hopefully could be launched in 2009.

Building up a global partnership against financial crime requires synergies between public and private sectors such as business and financial institutions, governments, law enforcement and justice agencies, and effective transnational cooperation is also needed, said Akira Fujino, representative of the UNODC Regional Center for East Asia and the Pacific, based in Bangkok.

International organizations like the UNODC are ready to use legal tools, as the United Nations Conventions against Corruption and Transnational Organized Crime, to provides assistance to help states strengthen their domestic anti-money laundering and anti- corruption mechanisms, and to support the establishment of financial intelligence units (FIU), and international cooperation among FIUs through the Egmont Group.

Xinhua General News Service