Strengthening Georgia’s capacities to counter money laundering through the use of virtual assets Project name: Innovative policy solutions to mitigate money laundering risks of virtual assets
Partners: National Bank of Georgia, Ministry Acting Governor of the National Bank of Georgia receives OSCE delegation of Internal Affairs of Georgia, Financial Main areas of engagement: Achievements: Monitoring Service of - Awareness raising among - Developed the first licensing regime public officials about risks and for Virtual Assets Service Providers. Georgia, Prosecutor’s opportunities of virtual assets. More than 50 applications were Office of Georgia - Developing regulatory framework filed since the regulation came into force in October 2023. related to FATF Recommendation 15, 16, mainly, but not limited to, - Increased capabilities of law Virtual Assets Service Providers enforcement to trace and Donors: registration and monitoring, Travel identify suspects involved in illicit transactions on blockchain. United States, United Rule and Red Flag Methodology. - Building capacity on investigations - Strengthened capacity of Kingdom, Germany, involving crypto – assets: tracing of prosecutors and investigators to illicit finance on the blockchain. manage seized and confiscated Poland, Italy and virtual assets. - Management of seized and Romania confiscated virtual assets. Numbers:
- 5 workshops with the National Bank of Georgia on the regulatory framework to combat money laundering conducted with virtual assets. - 4 trainings on investigations with more than 90 representatives of law enforcement. - 1 study visit of the National Bank of Georgia to Riga, Latvia, where the representatives of anti- money laundering and sanctions department could learn from the experience of Baltic states in registering Virtual Assets Service Providers, their regulation, monitoring and how to mitigate OSCE training on investigations involving crypto assets in Tbilisi risks of money laundering through the use of virtual assets. - 4 licenses of virtual assets tracing software were provided to Financial Monitoring Service, General Prosecutor’s Office, National Bank of Georgia and Ministry of Internal Affairs. - More than 200 participants in the OSCE activities, from which 120 were women.
Future plans:
- Continue OSCE’s strategic engagement with Georgian regulators to continue building efficient monitoring and oversight to combat financial crime conducted with virtual assets. OSCE facilitates workshop to strengthen Georgia’s regulations of Virtual Asset Service Providers - Make the impact of investigations training more sustainable by delivering Training-of-Trainers to the key investigation and law enforcement agencies. - Increase intra-agency and international co-operation of Georgia on virtual assets.
OSCE Secretariat
Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic
and Environmental Activities
Economic Governance Unit
Wallnerstrasse 6
1010 Vienna, Austria
E-mail: virtualassets@osce.org
www.osce.org/virtualassets