The Egmont Group adopted a statement at its plenary in Baku and published practical guidance that positions public-private partnerships as a core tool for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing work. The update commits member financial intelligence units to move beyond ad hoc exchanges toward more structured, intelligence-driven collaboration and says the group will, where possible, use its secure FIU-to-FIU channels to help connect national partnerships across borders. The statement identifies legal uncertainty and data-sharing constraints as major obstacles to effective partnerships and calls for clear legal bases, appropriate safeguards, safe-harbour mechanisms where feasible, and strict observance of privacy and data protection requirements. It also says technology such as privacy-enhancing technologies, federated learning, secure multi-party computation and, where appropriate, artificial intelligence can support earlier risk detection, but human-led intelligence must remain the decisive authority. The accompanying guidance sets out a practical framework for designing and running PPPs, covering risk-based scoping, governance, role allocation, secure information-sharing, gradual operational collaboration, and outcome-based effectiveness measures, with FIUs described as central coordinators and trusted intermediaries. The Egmont Group said it will intensify cooperation with the Financial Action Task Force, FATF-style regional bodies and other international actors to promote more harmonized PPP approaches. It highlighted environmental crime, fraud, virtual assets, trade-based money laundering and corruption as priority areas for targeted collaboration, and said established PPPs should, as a best practice, be integrated into national AML/CFT strategies while retaining flexible governance and sustainable resourcing.

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