Developing AI Solutions to Disrupt Illicit Money Flows

Dear Reader,

Welcome to our first newsletter!

TRACE is an EU funded project that is developing innovative AI technology to enhance investigations by enabling Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) to analyze and visualize different forms of data from various sources in order to combat cross border crimes and organizations, detect and disrupt respective illicit money flows and cybercrime. Our solutions will enable Law Enforcement Agencies to detect and combat money-laundering operations and financing of organised crime and terrorism by increasing the efficiency of information sharing.

Every year cross border investigation into illicit money flows are hindered by fragmented e-Evidence. To address this issue, the TRACE project will deliver a modular open-source framework for money-laundering investigations which can be tailored to meet the needs of law enforcement agencies'. This framework will enable investigators to scrape lawfully available data in any given language, analyse it and then visualise the results.

TRACE will provide AI solutions that will:

Identify, track and document illicit money flows

Disrupt the illicit money flows

Pave the way for recovering the proceeds of crime

In this newsletter you can find information about the project, its objectives and it is a great opportunity to get involved in our future activities, workshops, and research programme.

We welcome your insights on our research and innovation activities by contacting us at trace@trilateralresearch.com. You can follow project news and updates on our TRACE website and on our social media handles.

Professor Umut Turksen,

Project Coordinator of TRACE

Centre for Financial and Corporate Integrity, Coventry University

LEA Focus Groups and Use Cases

In order to provide a technical solution that will be beneficial to law enforcement agencies TRACE utilises a bottom-up approach. Understanding the needs and experiences of investigators familiar with the various use cases researched by the project will serve as the foundation of framework development.

TRACE Focus Group Discussions with LEAs

To begin gathering information the TRACE consortium has kick-started focus groups with LEAs from across Europe in both November and December. The discussions revolved around three thematic areas: investigating illicit money flows, tech-solutions and investigator’s needs, and good practice in information sharing.

Online Gambling: the perfect disguise to transfer illicit profits

TRACE develops use cases that depict the challenges of disrupting financial flows of criminal money. The project also demonstrates how TRACE toolkits help to detect, trace and disrupt such flows.

Publications

Cybercrime in Action: An International Approach to Cybercrime

What are the impacts and consequences of cybercrime? An increased use of the internet, the COVID-19 pandemic, developments in technology and capabilities of cyberspace have all led to a significant increase of criminality within the same domain. In this article, we present Cybercrime in Action: An International Approach to Cybercrime a book written by TRACE project coordinator Prof Turksen on contemporary and emerging cybercriminal acts and the measures that are designed to counter them.

LIBE Committee's Compromise Proposal on e-Evidence

Why is e-Evidence so essential in investigations and counter-terrorism operations? According to Europol, the cyber element of cybercrime has penetrated nearly every area of criminal activity allowing criminal enterprises to not only extend their reach but conceal their activities. In this article, Dr. Sachoulidou of NOVA University of Lisbon (NSL) examines the compromise proposal for a Regulation on cross-border access to electronic information in criminal matters.

In relevant news

Pandora Papers: Does history repeat itself?

Much like the Panama Papers, the recent Pandora Papers have once more confirmed the importance of whistle-blowers and investigative journalists in unearthing the illicit and hidden activities of the most powerful and wealthy individuals in our society. Back in 2018, PROTAX Case Studies (D1.2) found that the majority of high value tax fraud and tax evasion cases are discovered due to the information disclosed by whistle-blowers and/or investigative journalists, not LEAs. In this article we discuss the Pandora Papers and how TRACE plans on addressing the urgent need for advanced forensic and analytic tools to assist the investigations of law enforcement agencies.

Behind the scenes - TRACE project consortium

The TRACE consortium has 17 partners from 8 European countries. Research institutions, universities, technical and not-for-profit organisations and law enforcement agencies have joined forces to create a framework that will track and disrupt illicit money flows and provide the necessary e-Evidence to achieve cross-border convinctions.

LEA Cluster News & Events

Recognising that our projects have common stakeholders and similar objectives in supporting law enforcement against organised crime and terrorism, we have formed a cluster with nine other H2020 funded projects: CC-Driver, COPKIT, DARLENE, INSPECTr, LOCARD, PREVISION, PROTAX, RAYUELA and ROXANNE. Read more about the objectives of the cluster and find out more about each project.

Clustering in Horizon Europe

What is the importance of clustering among Horizon Europe projects? With the European Commission insisting on multiplying the impact of multiple projects funded under the same call, clustering in Horizon Europe becomes a critical activity. In this article we explore the various benefits that clustering among European projects brings to each project along with the additional clustering activities that project partner Privanova plans to implement in TRACE.

CC-Driver Landscape Study

CC-Driver has just published its recent landscape study of Cybercrime-as-a-Service. The full report discusses a wide variety of criminal activities offered in a “Cybercrime-as-a-Service” model. This model of cybercrime enables new cybercriminals to engage in all kinds of cyber criminality that was not possible before. If you would like to contribute to this study, you can assist by submitting your responses to three easy questions found here. All responses will be anonymised.

ROXANNE Second Field Test

On the 8th of October at the National Forensic Institute of Netherlands, ROXANNE conducted its 2nd field test successfully. The aim was to present a comprehensive and advanced platform that would be capable of processing and analyzing complex data sets. The field test demonstrated how previously known information can be combined with what is automatically extracted by ROXANNE technologies. Read more about the field test and watch the video.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 883543.

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