Financial institutions and law enforcement enhance their cooperation

Europol and its private partners in the financial sector have issued the EFIPPP Practical Guide for Operational Cooperation between Investigative Authorities and Financial Institutions. This newly-issued Practical Guide saw contributions from numerous EFIPPP public and private sector members, observers, and other experts. The guide provides best practices and lessons learned, drawing from the EFIPPP’s experience as a successful partnership and from other existing cooperative mechanisms. It addresses policymakers, investigative authorities and private stakeholders, providing suggestions to advance operational cooperation from a legal and a practical perspective.

The Europol Financial Intelligence Public Private Partnership (EFIPPP) provides a collaborative mechanism between more than 90 private stakeholders, Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) and law enforcement agencies to address structured threat information across the community. The EFIPPP secretariat is located within the European Financial and Economic Crime Centre (EFECC) at Europol.

The drafting of the Practical Guide was based on existing operational cooperative mechanisms in Denmark, Ireland, Latvia, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK. Taking a practical approach, the Practical Guide highlights that successful collaboration relies on trust between public and private stakeholders. Providing an outline of the building blocks required for successful collaboration, it recommends starting small with realistic expectations, and providing leadership by example.

As well as offering hands-on guidance to investigative authorities and financial institutions in shaping their cooperation, the Practical Guide provides inspiration for policymakers in areas where there is not yet an enabling legal environment. With this guide, the EFIPPP delivers on the call made by the European Commission in its EU roadmap to fight drug trafficking and organised crime.