For the first time, Europol has welcomed to its headquarters over 80 financial experts from around the world to participate in Project A.S.S.E.T. (Asset Search & Seize Enforcement Taskforce), a unique initiative to enhance the number of criminal assets seized globally.
In total, 43 law enforcement agencies from over 28 countries joined the operation and authorities from international organisations, including Eurojust and Interpol.
From 13 to 17 January, the specialists pooled their knowledge and expertise to establish a new organisational workstream to identify, freeze and seize criminal assets through all available means. This includes sharing expertise in identifying persons and new modi operandi surfacing in money laundering schemes and planning joint actions to seize assets.
Throughout the operation, experts identified 53 properties, eight of which were valued at €38.5 million, over 220 bank accounts, including one with a $5.6 million balance, 15 companies, over 20 yachts and luxury vehicles, 4 of which were valued at more than €600,000, 83 cryptocurrency addresses and wallets.
Another key result of the operation was the freezing of €200,000 in cryptocurrencies.
The initiative was organised by the European Financial and Economic Crime Centre (EFECC) and supported by Europol’s specialists and analysts in asset recovery, cryptocurrencies, open-source intelligence and innovation tools.
The seizure of criminally acquired assets is extremely low worldwide. It is estimated that law enforcement manages to take just a fragment of criminal assets out of criminals’ hands, which is below two per cent of the estimated yearly proceeds of organised crime.
The remaining 98 per cent provides the fuel for the continuation and expansion of organised crime activities. The most threatening criminal networks in the EU use real estate as one of the main industries to launder their illicit –and untaxed– profits (41 per cent).
Even though Project A.S.S.E.T. has taken place this week, law enforcement in all EU member states and beyond are already setting up joint actions to increase the number of criminal assets recovered.
Recent major operations, such as Whitewall and Gorgon, are good examples of this international law enforcement cooperation to increase seizures.
Based on the findings from these two investigations, Europol supported authorities from six countries in taking down underground bankers who were laundering the proceeds of large-scale drug trafficking and other serious crimes.
One of the most successful outcomes of this operation was the seizure of €27 million in cryptocurrencies alone.
