TRACE

There is an urgent need for a consolidated, evidence-based, shared understanding of illicit money flows.

Currently, lack of adequate equipment along with differences in organisational set-ups, infrastructure and the decision-making process hinder the investigations of money-laundering and tax evasion. This leads to the fragmented use of e-evidence which does not support cross-border investigations, prosecutions and convictions.

Emerging technologies and AI solutions can play an important role by enabling law enforcement agencies (LEAs) and financial intelligence units (FIUs) to navigate large volumes of information to follow money trails and effectively disturb and prosecute criminal activities.

TRACE supports LEAs in combating organised crime and terrorism by:

• Identifying the relevant hidden organised crime networks on the internet
• Monitoring and tracing the supply chain networks and the corresponding money flow
• Developing cutting-edge AI technologies that will enable investigators to scrape data from available databases and the world wide web (surface and dark web) in any given language, analyse it and visualise the results. This will help to develop a consolidated, evidence-based and shared understanding of illicit money flows underpinning the activities of organised crime and terrorists.

TRACE demonstrates the value of technology in expediting investigations relating to illicit money flows through relevant use cases identified by international partners considering recent crime threat assessments and the priorities of these agencies.

Trilateral identifies the challenges along with the ethical, legal and social issues that need to be considered in the development of each TRACE technology solution.

Considering potential risks, Trilateral develops recommendations regarding the ethical, legal and social impacts from tracing illicit money. This ensures that the TRACE project tools are built on the rule of law and transparency, to garner public trust.

Trilateral works on enhancing the project’s findings by creating a network of law enforcement agencies, policymakers, NGOs, CSOs, academics and the media to reach out to the public and all other relevant stakeholder communities.

This, in turn, facilitates novel collaborations, amplifying TRACE’s results and encouraging the uptake of the TRACE technology by all relevant stakeholders.

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