AMLA and OLAF strengthen cooperation in the fight against financial crime

The Authority for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AMLA) and the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) have today signed a Working Arrangement to strengthen cooperation and information exchange between the two bodies, supporting their work against money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud and corruption.

The Working Arrangement sets out a framework for cooperation and the exchange of operational and strategic information, including criminal patterns, emerging trends, risk indicators and crime prevention methods. These exchanges will help the two bodies identify links between their work and draw on each other’s expertise.

The arrangement also allows OLAF to contribute its anti-fraud expertise to joint analyses coordinated by AMLA, where relevant to OLAF’s mandate and subject to the consent of the participating Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs). This will support joint operational analysis of money laundering related to fraud involving EU funds. 

It also provides for information available in the context of joint analyses to be cross-checked against information made available by OLAF, helping to identify potential matches at an early stage.

By bringing together specialised expertise and intelligence, this arrangement ensures a faster, more coordinated EU response to complex financial crimes, as part of the cooperation framework set out in Article 94 of the AMLA Regulation and in line with the provisions of OLAF’s Regulation.

“Criminals do not respect institutional boundaries, and neither can our response. By combining our expertise and information, we make the EU’s financial system harder to abuse and easier to protect.”

Petr Klement, Director-General of OLAF, said: