As the Eastern Partnership region becomes increasingly integrated into the global economy and with increasing number of people from these countries with daily access to cyberspace, financial crime with the use of information technology, computer systems and data is becoming increasingly prevalent. Effectiveness of fighting such forms of cybercrime depends on many factors, including timely reporting and follow-up of such criminal activity, strong action aimed at seizing proceeds of crime and fighting money laundering, as well as formal and informal cooperation between public institutions and between the public and private sector.

With the Workshop on online fraud, crime proceeds and reporting mechanisms for Azerbaijani authorities on 14-15 January 2021, the CyberEast project has closed the series of similar workshops in the Eastern Partnership region, which started in March 2020. These two-day workshops brought together cybercrime investigators, financial investigators, financial intelligence officers, financial regulators, as well as private sector entities/business associations in order to discuss the matters of detecting and combating online crime proceeds, ensuring proper work of reporting mechanisms and interagency/public-private cooperation.

These series will be followed up with dedicated training sessions/exercises for countries involved and at least one Regional Meeting under the project in late 2021 and early 2022.