On April 17-18th, the training on the challenges for financial crime investigation and cryptocurrency was held for the representatives of law enforcement agencies. The training, organized by Investigation Service of the Ministry of Finance of Georgia, was led by an expert of the Internal Revenue Service of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, James Daniels.
The event was opened by the Deputy Head of Investigation Service, Mr. Vaja Panozishvili. As he mentioned, one of the priorities of Investigation Service is raising qualification of employees and sharing international experience, which is considered to be a prerequisite to effective fighting against crime committed in financial-economic field.
“Over the last few years, popularity of cryptocurrency and demand for it have been also increased in Georgia, similarly to the rest part of the world. Cryptocurrency represents a high-risk containing investment. Consequently, it is very important that the employees of Investigation Service possess maximum of information on electronic money. This will help them in the process of financial crime detection and investigation. It has to be mentioned that in parallel with technology development, methods and kinds of crime committed in the indicated sphere are becoming multifarious. Thus, the challenges are increasing, and for their overcoming and for the effective performance of the Service, sharing of modern methods and best practice is very important” – Mr. Vaja Panozishvili stated.
Within the training, the representative of the Internal Revenue Service of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the expert of the Cyber Crimes HQ, James Daniels made presentations on the technology of block chain and cryptocurrency, also financial and cybercrime investigation. James Daniels introduced to the training participants particular cases investigated by the Internal Revenue Service of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
The training was attended by the U.S. Embassy Attache in Frankfurt, German Federal Republic, Candace Kowal, the representatives of Investigation and Revenue Services of the Ministry of Finance of Georgia, Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia, State Security Service of Georgia and National Bank of Georgia.
