The second meeting of the Technical Inter-Institutional Working Group (ITWG) was held on 11.04.2024, in implementation of the decision approved by the Anti-Money Laundering Coordination Committee (AMLCC) on 27 December 2023.
This meeting was attended by representatives of the ITWG from the member institutions of the AMLCC such as the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Justice, the General Prosecutor’s Office, the Special Prosecutor’s Office, the National Bureau of Investigation, the Information State Service, the General Directorate of the State Police, the Bank of Albania, the Financial Supervision Authority and HIDAA; other important public institutions such as the General Directorate of Taxes, the General Directorate of Customs, the National Business Center, the Public Supervisory Board, the State Cadastre Agency and the Gambling Supervisory Authority, as well as representatives from the private sector such as the National Chamber of Notaries, Albanian Association of Banks, NAREA, IEKA, Association of Foreign Exchange Agencies (AFEA) and Association of Builders who have increased the quality of the contribution given so far.
In this meeting, the progress of the work carried out so far related to the drafting of the National Strategy “For the prevention of money laundering and terrorism financing of 2024-2028” and its action plan was presented (approval by the Coordinating Committee of the War against Money Laundering expected within the month of June 2024). The local expert contracted by GIZ who provided support for the drafting of the Strategy presented to the attendees the preliminary draft of the Strategy with its main pillars and vision. The attendees agreed to continue with the recognition and giving of relevant contributions for the improvement or revision of the preliminary draft of the Strategy.
Another very important point was also the reporting of the working progress of the 3 working subgroups set up within the ITWG (I-“On virtual assets”, II- “On the collection and quality of information for investigations related to ML/TF and III- For non-profit organizations”) who held intensive meetings during the March-April, agreeing on the initial tasks of these subgroups in the series of very demanding process that will take place during this year.
During the meeting the attendees had the opportunity to get to know in more detail the process of Albania’s preparation for the next raound of mutual evaluation by the Moneyval Committee, the completion of preliminary questionnaires by all responsible institutions, that is expected to be finalized in May 2024.
In this meeting, the participants were also introduced to FIA’s experience, in terms of increasing human capacities through participation in international projects, inter-institutional cooperation and training offered to the subjects of the law for the prevention of money laundering and terrorism financing. In this context, the emphasis was placed on the drafting of annual training plans, further coordination of work for their realization and continuous assessment of their impact on the system of preventing money laundering and terrorism financing.
