International cooperation

In accordance with the Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorism and Proliferation Financing, the Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia shares information with its counterparts in other countries, and, in what pertains to the control of the circulation of terrorism-related assets and property, with foreign and international bodies in charge of combatting the financing of terrorism.

The Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia has been a member of the Egmont Group since 1999. The Egmont Group is an international organisation of financial intelligence units whose purpose is to promote global cooperation among such units in combatting money laundering and terrorism financing.

To share information, the Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia uses the Egmont Group’s Egmont Secure Web network and the FIU.NET network supporting the financial intelligence units of the European Union.

Since 1998, the Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia has signed 41 bilateral cooperation memorandums with foreign financial intelligence authorities. These memorandums include the intention to comply with the Egmont Group Charter and the Principles of Information Exchange, as well as an agreement on the scope of mutual cooperation, the amount of information provided and the conditions for its subsequent use; the memorandum also specify the situations, in which the cooperation may be denied, and other technical matters. 

 For the Financial Intelligence Unit of Latvia, the main areas of international cooperation are as follows:

• sharing of information with foreign financial intelligence units, in the form of requests, replies, spontaneous reports, and questionnaires;
• analysis of reports on the possible financing of terrorism or proliferation received from reporting entities, or from foreign institutions;
• analysis of reports on the possible circumvention of international or Latvian national sanctions, or sanction violations, received from reporting entities, or from foreign institutions.