Hon. Pete De La Cuestas

Thank you so much. We now will hear from Mr. Pete de la Cuesta, the FBI illegal attache at the United States Embassy in Panama. Sir, with your permission, I'd like to address the group in Spanish, if that's all right with you. Buenos dias. Good morning, and thank you very much for the opportunity to share with you the information in regards to the task force of the FBI with our colleagues here in Panama. First of all, I would like to say that the FBI has a very nice story with Panama. We've been cooperating for over 75 years in Panama. I am a member of the embassy. They are a member and we are also a colleague with security services. The priorities of FBI, they're all important because they're not only priorities for us within the United States, but also outside fighting public corruption in every level and fighting organized crime. Before talking about AML, I should mention that AML is an instrument that is used to facilitate organized crime and corruption. So we must understand that what we can do to fight organized crime is talk about corruption, drug trafficking, and talk about organized crime itself. Corruption, we know that increases criminality, but going beyond that, it opens the door, the opportunity to create instability within governments. And I think that's a problem that we've seen in many countries. We understand corruption and what is it that corruption really needs? What is it that organized crime needs itself? And what is the easiest way to fight these crimes? It's attacking money laundering or investigating money laundering. Investigation of money laundering is an instrument which can be used to fight organized crime, corruption, drug trafficking here in Panama. When Panama was placed in the gray list, they had an opportunity because right at the same time there was a change in the administration. And in the change in this administration, they decided that Panama, the president, Nito Cortizo, accepted that he would do everything that he could do not only to get Panama out of the gray list, but to ensure that Panama would never be in that list again. So we have political will and as the FBI and the Embassy of the United States of America for our colleagues of IRS, DEA and HSI, we saw an opportunity, an opportunity of working together with the Panamanians. So we started a task force. The FBI has a history with task force, which are very interesting because the concept of task force many years ago started just to investigate bank robberies. And now task force are being used to investigate terrorism. So this concept, we already know it works. It works because we have the opportunity of working jointly with agencies that usually do not communicate amongst themselves. Here in Panama, the task force for money laundering and corruption has several members from Panama. The DIJ, which is a Directorate of Judicial Investigations, they investigate, these are the criminal experts in analyzing data, the public ministry prosecutors, which actually prosecute cases. The UAF, the Financial Investigation Unit, FIU, which can give us support to identify not only the information, but of ongoing cases. What's also interesting is that we've included the DIJ, which is the National Tax Authority, along with the FATF and FATF. We've been able to have now precedent crimes, which can be now used to be able to follow the trail of the crimes. And the superintendency of banks of Panama, they're not an investigator, but rather the regulator of banks here in Panama. So it's important to change the regulations that can facilitate investigations within the country itself. So working with our Panamanian counterparts, we have members of the FBI. The approach of this initiative has three points. One, develop capacities to ensure that the personnel, the staff that are carrying out the investigations have that capacity and understanding of the processes within the crime itself and the different ways in how investigations can be carried out. Exchanging intelligence, not only among agencies within the country, but also on an international level and operational collaboration, which is very important because there are many cases that we can look here in Panama that they could look like they're just Panamanian, but they could touch upon other nations. And here, many of the cases in Panama will touch the United States because the 90 plus banks here in Panama have a co-responsible relationship with banks in the United States. This co-responsible relationship gives us the United States, the FDA, DEA, HSI and IRS. Then we have the opportunity and the jurisdiction to be able to investigate. Developing capacities. The idea here is to understand different processes, different processes that might have been used in Panama previously, learning from processes that we've seen for many years have used in the United States using technology, new technology that has not been used here before, but it has been used by the FBI to facilitate investigations. How to look into bank accounts, the required process to analyze a bank account. The process here is slightly different to what we do in the United States. Here, it could take up to three months just to check one bank account because of the amount of data it could have. We have different processes that are able to facilitate that using now technology. We can do this in one day or even hours. This exchanging and opportunity to work together, we're able to bring in technology and experience from our investigators to be able to facilitate this. The idea of working together is to identify the processes that have failed before, admin processes and restrictive processes, and to find what other barriers they have to carry out their investigations. When we're able to speed up investigations due to proximity, what does that mean? Finally, they're sitting together in the same room, not in different parts of the city. We have the public ministry, which is sitting right next to a member of the DIJ, right next to a member of the Panamanian FIU, along with the FBI in the same room to be able to share information, to talk about the cases and to think about how we can work not only faster, to be a lot more agile in the investigations and how to identify problems within the system itself. In problems that we can pose to the public ministry or to the National Assembly or Congress so that they can change laws to improve investigation and to fight against AML laws like asset forfeiture, to be able to improve and increase the security in the country and to be able to exchange intelligence. This is extremely important. Intelligence exchange will facilitate all the investigations, and this is a process that is already in existence, but it's formal. When we exchange intelligence also in an informal manner, it really allows investigations to flow so much faster. Operational collaboration, we all have an interest. The interest of the United States, it's not only the cases, because the FDI would like to help with AML cases and solve them because they affect American citizens. And also here in Panama, so that we find this need to work together. With bank accounts, cooperation with witnesses. And we can say that our current status, the group is pretty big. Well, maybe 40, 45 people at a national level to investigate AML and CFT and corruption. I don't think it's not enough, actually, if I think about it, but it's our start. We have 34 officers of the Judicial Investigation Directorate, six from the public ministry, two from the Panamanian FIU. From the FBI, we have two special agents and one financial analyst. I think it's interesting that we are here in this building right next to the Ministry of Security, and next to the Ministry of Security is where we will have the building of the task force, so that we're as close to the Ministry of Security here. And we have seen that there is this interest on behalf of the government to fight AML in this country. International cooperation, which is extremely important. These investigations are cross-border. Money laundering, corruption, and organized crime. They don't believe in any flags. They do not recognize our borders, meaning that we have to work together as a single unit, as a single team, as a single task force, to be able to fight corruption and organized crime using money laundering investigations as a tool. Thank you very much.