Priority investigative fronts will be addressed in a joint and coordinated manner. These are: illicit financial networks, cybercrime, criminal structures in prisons, and trafficking of drugs, firearms and precursors.
At a working meeting held in Brasilia (Brazil), the Attorney General, Luz Adriana Camargo Garzón, and her counterparts from Brazil, Paulo Gonet Branco, and Chile, Ángel Valencia Vásquez, held an agreement that considers the creation of a mixed investigative agency to address criminal phenomena affecting the three countries to move forward in dismantling transnational criminal organizations.
The initiative arises from a joint concern since multiple threats posed by organized crime are permanent and cannot be addressed in an isolated way. On the contrary, they require the sustained collaboration and joint work of the prosecutor’s offices.
The proposed mixed agency will initially have three lines of action: promoting the use of criminal analysis and investigative technology through the inclusion of existing tools and the exchange of technical knowledge; creating a shared database on organized crime that will allow the prompt exchange of information related to criminal organizations and their structures; and increasing international cooperation to dismantle groups operating throughout the entire logistical chain of trafficking and other illicit businesses. This includes defining cases of common interest to create Joint Investigation Teams (Equipos Conjuntos de Investigación – ECI in spanish).
In this way, it is expected to address some investigative fronts that are preliminary established such as: the identification and monitoring of financial transactions and corporate structures; the recovery of assets derived from criminal activities of individuals and legal entities, including crypto assets; the exchange of information and digital evidence associated with crimes committed using the internet and massive fraud; the dismantling of networks operating inside and from prisons; and the strengthening of criminal prosecution, including in ports to impact illegal structures linked to the trafficking of drugs, precursors, and firearms.
The coordinated work will be led by the international cooperation units of the three prosecutor’s offices, along with specialized agencies in organized crime.
The agreement signed in Brasilia establishes that all commitments will be adopted by consensus and that, in a first phase, the mixed agency will be consolidated exclusively between Brazil, Chile, and Colombia before accepting the participation of other prosecutor’s offices in the region.
The Office of the Attorney General makes this information public for reasons of general interest.