Multi-agency cooperation
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced in September 2025 that research and contributions from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), Egmont Group, UNODC, and Interpol resulted in the publishing of the Handbook on International Co-operation on Money Laundering, Detection, Investigation, and Prosecution.
Goals of the handbook
The handbook and the guidance it offers was written in response to the increased challenges created by the evolution of financial crime and money laundering (ML). In preparing the handbook, the organisations involved in its development sought to:
- Note the critical challenges international cooperation efforts faced with regards to detecting, investigating, and prosecuting money laundering
- Identify practical tools and best practices for combatting international money laundering
Intended audience
The intended audience for the handbook is financial intelligence units (FIUs), law enforcement agencies (LEAs), prosecutors, and “other operational competent authorities” involved in combatting money laundering.
Handbook structure
The handbook features eight chapters plus an executive summary and conclusion and consists of two sections:
Part 1 (Understanding the Operational Landscape) covers chapters 2-4 and explains the “operating landscape and international co-operation for ML detection, investigation, and prosecution”.
Part 2 (Best practices, tools, and mechanisms) explains “the best practices, tools, and mechanisms that jurisdictions may consider adopting to achieve successful transactional ML detection, investigation, and prosecutions”.
Overview of handbook chapters
Chapter 1 (Introduction) lays out the handbook’s objectives, structure, scope, and the methodology informing the publication’s findings.
Chapter 2 (Setting the scene) explains the differences between formal and informal cooperation, and explains the four different types of informal cooperation available:
- multi-lateral
- bilateral
- diagonal
- joint analysis and investigations
Chapter 3 (Evolution and challenges) looks at recent changes that have taken place in the criminal landscape (e.g. developments in communication, the increasing rapidity in funds transfers and payments), and how these changes affect and impact informal cooperation efforts.
Chapter 4 (Informational needs and primary multi-lateral networks) addresses the importance of ensuring that FIUs, LEAs, and other investigative authorities have access to a wide range of information, and identifies the five categories of information pertinent to detecting, investigating, and prosecuting money laundering:
- Criminal information (judiciary and law enforcement information)
- Anti-Money Laundering/Counter Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) disclosures (e.g. suspicious transactions reports and other information national legislation requires, such as cash transaction information or “wire transfer reports, and other threshold-based declarations or disclosures”)
- Financial information (information concerning the “financial affairs of entities of interest that helps to understand their nature, resources, structure, and capabilities” that also helps forecast future activity)
- Open source (data available through open sources such as social media, print, etc.)
- Regulatory information (information maintained by regulatory agencies)
Chapter 4 also provides authorities such as FIUs and LEAs with information about the appropriate multi-lateral networks they can contact and cooperate with informally and share information – such as Interpol, the Anti-Money Laundering Operational Network (AMON), and more.
Chapter 5 (Overarching best practices) discusses:
- the importance of good requests and how to prepare them;
- the necessity of maintaining continual communication during cooperation to ensure the requirements of both the requesting and receiving parties are being met;
- the benefits of standardised protocols, practices, and governance principles and rules;
- the role that good domestic coordination plays in international cooperation; and
- why it’s important to request assistance early during an investigation or inquiry.
Chapter 6 (Tools and mechanisms for detection and investigation) delves into examples of secure and encrypted communications platforms utilised by multi-lateral networks available to authorities (e.g. Europol’s SIENA and Interpol’s I-24/7), the benefits that arise from using them (e.g. secure bilateral cooperation), and discusses how digital tools can help mitigate cooperation challenges.
Chapter 6 also notes that “diagonal foreign exchanges can happen both directly and indirectly” and states that the value in such outcomes is the data it produces, which can result in identifying “actionable leads”.
Chapter 7 (Transiting into investigation and prosecution) identifies how the early use of informal cooperation can benefit formal cooperation and provides examples of informal channels that can be used to procure information.
Chapter 8 (Joint analysis and investigations) identifies:
- the types of authorities, agencies, and frameworks involved in such collaborative undertakings and the challenges that joint analyses and investigations may face;
- the importance of building trust for collaborations and how to go about building it; and
- the importance of establishing common expectations, terms of references, and clear operating frameworks.
Additional guides
In addition to the primary offerings presented in the handbook, three additional operational brochures have also been published that are “tailored towards overcoming the practical challenges faced by financial intelligence units, law enforcement authorities and central authorities responsible for mutual legal assistance, including prosecutors”. The three brochures are:
- Enhancing AML/CTF investigations through informal co-operation: A practical guide for central authorities in charge of MLA, including prosecutors (PDF, 5.8 MB)
- Effective informal operational and strategic information exchange: A practical guide for LEAs (PDF, 8.1 MB)
- Effective informal operational and strategic information exchange: A practical guide for FIUs (PDF, 7.5 MB)
The FATF have made the handbook available for downloading at the following link:
Key takeaways
By using all the tools, resources, best practices, channels, and more that are laid out across all eight chapters of the handbook, money laundering can be more quickly and effectively countered.
