TRACFIN: Fight against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing

May 18, 2019 | Real estate tools, Tax / Legal

TRACFIN analyzes the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing. Attached to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the organization is responsible for the fight against fraud, money laundering and terrorist financing.

Since 2006, it is a financial intelligence unit whose operational action is organized around three departments and one division:

  • Department of Analysis, Intelligence and Information
  • Investigations Department
  • International Department

As well as the division fighting the financing of terrorism.

Within these three departments, legal advisers are responsible for providing an independent advisory opinion of the director on the characterization of facts that may constitute the offense of money laundering.

There are also four integrated liaison officers within the division:

  • National Police
  • National Gendarmerie
  • Central Office for the Suppression of Financial Crime
  • Customs

The Strategic Analysis Unit (CAS), which uses the available information, identifies trends in money laundering and terrorist financing.

TRACFIN is a service composed of numerous national-level liaison officers under the authority of the Ministry of Action and Public Accounts. Governed by the Monetary and Financial Code, Tracfin can not “seizes itself”.

It receives different types of information requiring a service analysis. This administrative department is responsible for processing financial intelligence. His three missions are mainly:

  1. To receive and protect information on clandestine financial circuits and potential terrorist financing and illicit money laundering operations
  2. To Analyze and enrich the financial information received
  3. To Transmit financial information

Efficiently, TRACFIN collects, analyzes, enriches and exploits any information specific to establish the origin or the criminal destination of a financial transaction based on the declarations made by the professionals subject or information received by the partner administrations and the foreign financial information cell.

It should be noted that any presumption of suspicion can be transmitted to the courts, pursuant to Article 40 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.