Regional workshop on forensic audit concludes in Amman

AMMAN — The EU Global Facility on Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) and the French embassy in Jordan concluded a three-day regional workshop on “Forensic Audit in the fight against Money Laundering (ML)” in Amman.

Bringing together representatives of various judicial and financial intelligence institutions, the workshop witnessed the participation of delegations from Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, according to a statement from the organisers.

European Union Ambassador to Jordan Maria Hadjitheodosiou stressed that forensic audit allows reinforcing national policies of transparency and integrity while enhancing all the steps of the judicial, law enforcement, financial intelligence and auditors to fight criminality under the principles of rule of law and following international standards.

“I sincerely hope that this event has set the ground to build a stronger platform to work together and that it will contribute to foster the necessary inter-institutional synergies at both the national and regional levels. A strong AML/CFT regime requires that each component in the financial intelligence and the penal chain is working effectively and efficiently together,” said Hadjitheodosiou.

David Hotte, Team Leader at the EU Global Facility on AML/CFT, said: “This workshop is of particular importance for the EU Global Facility, as it constitutes the very first regional event we organise in this country. We have been providing technical assistance to Jordan since 2019, with more than 36 activities conducted so far.” 

“The very nature of money laundering forces us to be ever innovative in the techniques we use to stop criminals. For this reason, multiagency workshops like today’s, which involve new institutions in the AML/CFT, are paramount,” he added. 

Over the course of three days, representatives from oversight bodies (court of auditors, inspection services, anticorruption authorities) and from the justice sector (prosecutions, criminal courts) as well as a representative from the Financial Intelligence Unit, worked together to reinforce the application of the forensic audit in the fight against ML.

“This regional workshop is a first experience aiming to create a regional synergy and to present the action of France through the interventions of its embassy in Jordan in connection with Expertise France on the one hand, and of the EU on the other hand in its Justice and AML/CFT dimensions (…) this event will be particularly rich both from the point of view of professional exchanges and from the point of view of method, as this regional workshop is intended to be a pilot project for the region,” stated Janaïna Herrera, Chargé d’affaires of the Embassy of France in Jordan.

“This workshop is perfectly in line with the objective of bringing together, both at the national level of each country and at the regional level, all the institutions that fight against financial crime related to public funds [public procurement, illegal interest taking, embezzlement of public funds, misappropriation of public funds, etc.] and its avatars [corruption, money laundering], and to show the attachment of France and the EU to these issues in the MENA region,” she added.

Ultimately, forensic audit aims to strengthen and optimise the means and strategies to combat financial crime and corruption by bringing together often too fragmented players. It does so by reinforcing the cooperation both at the inter-institutional level and at the regional level, thus optimising the practices and strategies implemented by the forensic audit.