OSCE supports 6th Meeting of Permanent Conference of Organized Crime Prosecutors

Over 30 participants took part in the sixth meeting of the Permanent Conference of Organized Crime Prosecutors (PCOCP) organized online by the OSCE Secretariat in collaboration with the OSCE Mission to Serbia on 27 April 2021. The event highlighted PCOCP achievements over the last 5 years and the use of the Permanent Conference for addressing cross-border co-operation and best practices in investigations and prosecutions of organized crime in the OSCE region. Participants also welcomed Austria’s intention to become the PCOCP’s 13th member.

“With the dramatic changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, we see even more of a need to enhance co-operation at the regional and international level, and initiatives such as the Permanent Conference go along way in addressing these issues,” said Anita Ramasastry, Special Representative to the Swedish Chairperson-in-Office at the OSCE on Combating Corruption. “The need to better understand the impact of organized crime on our legal economies is even more urgent now, as the measures that participating States will undertake to mitigate the recession and boost economic development will also offer new opportunities for criminal groups through corruption and infiltration.”

Participants included chief prosecutors, representatives from PCOCP, and high-level OSCE representatives, as well as prosecutors from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Montenegro, the Republic of North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia. Representatives of Austria also announced the country’s intention to join the PCOCP as its 13th member.

Over the course of the meeting, participants exchanged information on complex criminal cases and new issues related to addressing organized crime, including a rise in organized crime activity in the legal economy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. They also detailed good practices for ensuring parallel financial investigations during the prosecution of criminal cases, as well as the importance of sharing operational information in specific cross-border money laundering and asset recovery cases.

Participants also agreed that asset seizure and confiscation remains a key component of an efficient and sustainable strategy for breaking down criminal business models and preventing and repressing organized crime. They recognized that a lack of harmonization in law and practice affects international co-operation in this area.

Jan Braathu, Head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia, presented an overview on the implementation of the PCOCP Belgrade Declaration of Intent. The Declaration was signed by 10 OSCE participating States in 2016 to strengthen their mutual co-operation in combating organized crime.

The PCOCP was established in 2016 through an initiative supported by the OSCE Mission to Serbia. It is currently supported through a regional extra-budgetary project on asset recovery jointly implemented by the OSCE Transnational Threats Department and the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities, with financial support from the United States, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom.