Mexico's Ministry of Finance and Public Credit co-leads launch of the Transnational Organized Crime Working Group with FinCEN

Mexico’s Ministry of Finance and Public Credit published a communique on Mexico’s role as co-lead, through its Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), in establishing the Transnational Organized Crime Working Group (TOC-WG) alongside the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The TOC-WG is structured as an international cooperation mechanism, operating in coordination with the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), to strengthen financial intelligence sharing and disrupt the financial structures of transnational organized crime. The first in-person TOC-WG meeting took place in Washington, D.C. on 12–13 January and brought together financial intelligence units from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Uruguay. Participants presented money laundering typologies linked to criminal organizations, including networks of facilitators and accomplices, proceeds and alternative payment methods, virtual assets and service providers, traditional vulnerable activities, and schemes associated with crimes in the hydrocarbons sector, with the aim of identifying common patterns and opportunities to strengthen detection, analysis and coordinated international action.