The Head of the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine Mr. Igor Cherkaskyi presented the Public Report

Presentation of the Public Report of the Head of the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine Mr. Igor Cherkaskyi on activities results for 2017 was held on April 6, 2018.
The event was attended by the representatives of public, leading experts on financial monitoring issues and the SFMS’ specialists.
At the beginning of the presentation, the Head has focused on the basic aspects of the legal support of the SFMS’s activity, its structure and informed about the main SFMS’s functions to identify and freeze the proceeds from crime or related to terrorist financing.
In this aspect, the Head has emphasized that an important result was the court"s decision to confiscate in 2017 the criminal proceeds in the amount of about USD 1.5 billion to the State budget. Due to the results of a multi-stage and complex financial investigation, the mentioned proceeds have been detected and blocked by the SFMS.
The second important event in 2017 was the MONEYVAL 5th round of mutual evaluation of Ukraine. The SFMS has provided coordination of the preparation and holding of the 5th round of evaluation at all stages. Following the results of the evaluation the significant level of operational and institutional capacity of the SFMS under all rating has been confirmed.
Also, Mr. Igor Cherkaskyi has mentioned that number of reports sent by the entities over the past five years has increased from 1 to over 8 million.
Special attention was paid to work of the SFMS in terms of generalization of typological studies. In particular, during the reporting year, the SFMS published two typological studies: “Risks of Cash Use” and “Risks of Terrorism and Separatism”, which outline the main methods and schemes by which criminals and criminal groups conduct cash transactions for money laundering and terrorist financing.
At the same time, the Head has concentrated on the SFMS’s work concerning increasing of effectiveness of interaction with law enforcement and intelligence authorities, to which the SFMS submits appropriate case referrals.
It was emphasized that in 2017, 712 referrals have been sent to the law enforcement authorities, but in general, from March 2014 to December 2017 - 2665 case referrals have been submitted.
Another important aspect of the SFMS’s activity, which was noted by Mr. Igor Cherkaskyi, was the issue of coordination of financial monitoring participants.
Such a coordination, which is based on the implementation of the Strategy for the development of the financial monitoring system until 2020, is performed both at the information level, due to the Unified State Information System, and the activities of the Council on the prevention and counteraction to legalization (laundering) of the proceeds from crime, terrorist financing and the financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as well as cooperation with professional associations of reporting entities and public.
Mr. Igor Cherkaskyi also emphasized that due to significant budget support in 2017, the SFMS’s employees managed to modernize a significant segment of the IT system of the SFMS and this work is ongoing.
Furthermore, it was mentioned that without a successful coordination between the financial monitoring participants it would not have been possible to conduct the MONEYVAL 5th round of mutual evaluation of Ukraine.
The Head has drawn his attention to the important element of the work such as methodological assistance and cooperation with reporting entities.
He has noted that on the basis of the State institution of postgraduate education “Financial Monitoring Academy” under the SFMS, only in 2017 1853 specialists of the public and private sectors have been trained.
Moreover, under the support of the OSCE Project Coordinator in Ukraine the Compilation of legislation acts on combating money laundering and terrorist financing (with comments and explanations) was developed in 2017.
At the same time, the Head has noted the significant amount of work of the SFMS in the international area. The SFMS cooperates with many international organizations, including FATF, MONEYVAL, the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units and others. Currently, the SFMS has signed 74 Memoranda of Understanding with foreign FIUs. In 2017, SFMS has actively exchanged financial information with foreign FIUs.
At the end of his speech, Mr. Igor Cherkaskyi has informed about the future SFMS’s activity plans. Thus, an important direction of work will be the continuation of the cooperation with MONEYVAL in the framework of coordination measures of the implementation of the National Action Plan for combating money laundering until 2019, as well as the Action Plan for implementing of the MONEYVAL recommendations following the results of the MONEYVAL 5th round of mutual evaluation.
After the presentation of the Public Report, the Head has noted that the SFMS as a coordinating authority of financial monitoring system in order to achieve effective results in its work will remain open and ensure constructive cooperation with state supervisors, law enforcement authorities, reporting entities and particularly civil society.
In addition, the Head has expressed his gratitude to every employee of the SFMS for his/her contribution to the results achieved.
The SFMS’s Report for 2017 can be reached on the official web site of the SFMS under the Section “About the Service” – “Activity reports”.

Press Service of the SFMS
www.sdfm.gov.ua
presa@sdfm.gov.ua