Hon. Jorge Villalba

I never get tired of hearing you speak and I always learn something when you share. Thank you for sharing that capacity that you have of always staying updated. I imagine you must not sleep. So to finish for today, we talked a bit about the regional aspects, we talked about security, we talked about money laundering throughout the region, and Panama has a protagonist role in this agenda. So for that reason, we would like to invite Mr. Jorge from the Financial Investigations Unit here in Panama. Hello, yes, afternoon to everyone. I know that we are in our closing minutes, so I will start out first of all by giving thanks to all of the organizers of this forum, those from the Parlatino and others, including the Parliamentary Intelligence Security Forum and their staff. There was a meeting that we had at a regional level with all of the different financial intelligence units in the region, and one way or another, at the beginning of the pandemic, we saw either directly or indirectly that almost all of us were affected, especially the Panamanian Intelligence Finance Unit, Financial Intelligence Unit, but perhaps we were a bit prepared with a contingency plan. Quickly, not wanting, I wouldn't want to use the word improvisation, but very quickly we needed to implement an action plan and develop our contingency plan as an FIU. Outside of that, the recess for that meeting, we were discussing some different topics and most of the population or most of the team for the FIU, that really forms the backbone of the group in terms of operations and technical analysis, most of them are young people, so we had to apply our biosecurity measures and it was not easy at the beginning. We were not affected or we had in fact been infected in some units had had developed COVID infections and so now at that point our system was very organized. As you know, the financial, the national financial system continued operating. We only had, they only had to develop their own contingency plans as well and their teams with which we communicate also continued functioning. They must still meet their requirements for reporting for all of the different transactions. You're aware of how those things work, I'm sure. So, the FIU online continued operating. We only had to monitor from our homes. The system continued to operate, so we were supervising, looking at different requirements, operations reports, things that the financial sector was managing. I think that this was public as well, but in some media, despite the fact that it was a pandemic, 2020, the suspicious operations reports increased compared with previous years, something that we could not explain, but it certainly happened. So, we as a financial investigation unit, we had to react. Number one, because we had to respond to the needs of the region. You know that there is an international information exchange process for intelligence exchange, but that is generally managed on-site with a platform on-site because of security issues. We could not use that system. It would be a risk to use it remotely, to access it remotely. So, we had to basically assign a person. Some people continued to work remotely. They used some different terms in the public sector for it, but basically to work remotely, and the supervisors stayed on-site, and little by little, we started bringing in some units. So, we really took advantage of the time during which the judiciary branch and the public ministry had suspended their activities, also the judiciary branch, and so we took advantage of that time to pick up all of the intelligence information that had been requested from other countries' FIUs. Crime doesn't stop. We were all facing a pandemic, but crime does not stop. We couldn't just sit at home and let the FIU system run on its own. There was more and more information coming in. So, some of us were still on-site, and little by little, we would start to join back in, and we were able to respond to the vast majority of the requirements needed by FIUs in other regions, and we were able to provide that technical assistance to the public ministry when they request information that they need from the FIU. You may have heard recently we talk about financial products or the products that the FIU offers, and the public ministry, this is in law. It's law 23 in the executive decree which handles the FIU, and it's in recommendation 29 of the FATF about the dissemination of information. What comes in with the suspicious activity report, as you know, our subjects provide those for analysis, and they require analysis. So, we have a safe system installed where that information is managed, and they develop a financial information report where they believe there might be a money laundering case happening. Before the pandemic, there were work tables set up with the public ministry in order to determine timelines, transaction timelines, etc., and why do we do all of that? It's because, and you can correct me, doctor, but intelligence must be timely. Intelligence that is slow is not useful. Intelligence gets collected, it gets analyzed, it gets processed, and it must be used immediately. If we spend a lot of time looking at that information or before we're able to look at it, then eventually maybe we get around to creating a report that we can send to the public ministry, but perhaps if there's a long delay as they get through that process, then the investigation phase has to start, and it's all too slow. So, at the FIU, we have to understand these issues of time. We cannot give the public ministry this information when the dates are practically historic. So, this investigation could collapse because it's no longer, or it's basically expired. In Panama, when we're talking about money laundering, it's 5 to 12 years to prosecute, and so we must be careful about our time to give sufficient time to the investigators to do their investigations and develop their processes. Our analysis team went through developing and processing all of these reports with financial intelligence and picking back up the public ministry work groups. It's not just about sending information. We sit down with the public ministry, we present the cases, we basically show a theory of what could possibly have happened, a potential money laundering case, so they can begin an investigation, and that is how we use those suspicious activity reports. Now, just as the FIUs do, just as we must request information from other organizations like customs or with the case that you mentioned about contraband, right? They have the right to request support, technical support, from us, and so what do we mean by that? We offer them any information that they might need according to certain guides about what kind of information they can ask us for, because we do have internal databases, but we also have open source information. We have closed sources of information, but everything related with financial instruments, financial tools, we have to request it from the organizations, and that the financial organizations, and that takes time. There was a speaker who talked a bit about tax and tax evasion and the use of technological tools to analyze this kind of information. Peter De La Cuesta from FBI spoke about this. He said this kind of analysis could take 30, 60, 90 days, but if we have a tool, then we can cut these timelines, and it can help for the analysis of future investigations. Exchanging information internationally, although, of course, everything that I'm talking about right now, it must go through a judiciary process as well. We only offer financial intelligence, graphs, traceability, theories that might be included in this economic crime. All of those must be proven in court by the public ministry. That is why it is so important to have that relationship between all of the different factors that are working. There are other organizations that participate, international organizations. As we've said, as we've talked about throughout the day, this is a transnational crime. It is maybe not just one crime, but perhaps one part of a series of crimes. In the case of technical assistance, that doesn't always come because of an SAR report. Perhaps a prosecutor comes and asks. There are actually about five prosecutors that ask for help most often, whether they are drug prosecutors. I would say throughout the entire country, because they're not just in Panama City. They're in all of the different regions. There are organized crime prosecutors. There are two different ones. One of them is specialized in money laundering. There are different kinds of prosecutors for fraud, depending on the crime that is being committed, and the anti-corruption prosecutor. Those are the ones who ask us for the most support in order to provide information that we have in our databases and to suggest other intelligence information. If we need to request international information, the prosecutor's office can request it, but they must still follow the judiciary process to do so. All of this information is intelligence information. It's not evidence. All of this information must be used for an investigative process. Our reports cannot actually be used in court. There must be a report from the money laundering organization or from the forensics group. There are a lot of cogs that are working together, and they must be coordinated. Even more so when operations and investigations are happening at a regional level and many times at an international level. Perhaps the operation is happening locally, but it will affect many other countries in the region. So we must know what we're doing, what phase we're in, whether we're going to do a search, we're going to do a seizure, what effects could it have if we there is an investigation and then we're going to take it to court. Do we have enough proof to actually process the crime? So those are the different phases we go through. Taking advantage of the moment in which the FIU is working not only locally but also internationally, and contributing to the products that we can offer, not just to our local prosecutor's office, but also by providing assistance with the group, the admin group, with other financial investigation units. If they request it from us, we can provide it. And so I'm really open here to hear any questions about our operations, about the technical work that we do, about how things are working during the pandemic, because that's certainly an interesting situation we've been dealing with. But as I say, crime does not stop and we are still fighting crime. So I'm here to answer any questions. Thank you.