On April 19 a visit of the Ukrainian delegation of the representatives of public sector and state bodies to exchange experience with the German governmental institutions started. The Ukrainian delegation included Mariia Heletii (ISAR Ednannia), Anna Isichko (CEDEM), Mariia Poloz (CEDEM), Maksym Latsyba (UCIPR), Yuliia Derkach (Caritas Ukraine), Anatolii Movchun (State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine), Denys Khokhlov (Ministry of Finance of Ukraine), Anna Blahovisna (Prosecutor General’s Office), Anna Zaslavska (State Tax Service), Oleksandr Tabak (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine), Anton Kryvoruchko (SSU), Iryna Prytyskach (National Bank of Ukraine).
On the German side, there were representatives of a number of authorities involved in national risk assessment (NRA): The Federal Ministry of Finance, which is responsible for conducting the national risk assessment in Germany, is currently preparing for the next round of the national risk assessment and improving its methodology, shared its rules, methods and approaches.
The Federal Ministry of the Interior of Germany, which acted as a co-organizer of this visit, shared the experience of successfully conducting a sectoral risk assessment of non-profit organizations. Their experience was highly appreciated by FATF and Moneyval. Also, specialists of the German Ministry of the Interior, together with the experts of the Federal Ministry of Justice, shared the specifics of banning the activities of non-profit organizations that carry out terrorist activities or finance terrorism. Representatives of the Financial Intelligence Service of Germany spoke about the current situation with violations committed by NPOs in the field of combating the financing of terrorism.
Representatives of the Ukrainian side actively asked questions and shared the peculiarities of financial monitoring and national risk assessment with their German colleagues. The discussion turned out to be very lively and made it possible to establish fruitful contacts for further cooperation.
Representatives of German federal authorities emphasized the importance of cooperation with the non-profit sector, which is “not an enemy, but a partner” and is very useful. Such cooperation brings a number of benefits to the state sector, in particular:
- Obtaining up-to-date and immediate information about the state of threats and problems in the sector, because the non-profit sector knows better what its concerns are.
- Being able to develop preventive measures to prevent the terrorist threat in the sector.
- Implementing important urgent humanitarian and charitable tasks in crisis situations and in crisis territories, when actions by the forces of state authorities alone are ineffective and slow.
We thank the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, the Federal Ministry of the Interior of Germany and the German NGO VENRO for their help in organizing this visit. We are confident that the experience gained by both parties will contribute to the democratization and reasonable efficiency of financial monitoring of the non-profit sector of both countries.
