The NFM project closing ceremony
On December 11-12, 2023, at the Training and Conference Center in Lucień, the closing event of the project “Strengthening the competences of law enforcement agencies and judicial institutions in the area of criminal and strategic analysis, supporting the process of identifying, combating and preventing corruption and economic crime” financed by the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 took place.
The meeting was an opportunity to present the results of the ending project and to contribute to the discussion on the need for further development of criminal and strategic analysis among law enforcement officers in cooperation with scientific community.
The project involved Polish and foreign law enforcement agancies and international organizations, such as: the National Prosecutor's Office, the Ministry of Finance, the Military Counterintelligence Service, the Internal Security Agency, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Austrian Prosecutor's Office for Combating Economic Crime and Corruption (WSKtA). We would also like to thank other services and institutions that were involved in individual project events for their contribution, active participation and transfer of knowledge and expertise. In our project activities we were also supported by representatives of the analytical departments of the Police Headquarters, the Central Bureau of Investigation of the Police and the Polish Financial Supervision Authority. At the international level, we could count on the support of representatives of the National Crime Agency, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the United Nations analytical division and the Italian Guardia di Finanza. High-class independent experts from the commercial market were also involved in the project events, sharing their knowledge and experience, e.g. in the field of artificial intelligence or big data processing solutions. Our activities were intensively supported by scientific communities, whose commitment confirms the thesis that modern law enforcement agencies and Polish scientific community should cooperate with each other, because they have convergent goals, e.g. in the field of designing modern technologies in forensics and educating criminal analysis engineers.
During the 2.5 years of the project, in difficult times of the pandemic and the Ukrainian-Russian war in which the project partner (NABU) was involved, we managed to achieve all project milestones. As part of the project, we organized:
- International Conference LEAF 2022 (Law Enforcement Analysis of the Future) on October 26-28, 2022 in Warsaw in stationary and online format. During the conference, 23 lectures were delivered from Poland and abroad. Among the 500 event participants, we had guests from Hungary, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, the Great Britain, Lithuania, Portugal, France, Ireland and Ukraine. They were representatives of European law enforcement agencies, independent experts in the field of OSINT, representatives of the Polish LEA and army, as well as foreign and Polish scientists. The culmination of the conference was the publication of a post-conference publication, which is a collection of articles in the field of criminal and strategic analysis;
- the first criminal analysis laboratory at the CBA was established, equipped with modern equipment, which is already used to develop the analytical competences of CBA officers. The total value of the equipment purchased is PLN 412,000;
- 3 study visits took place: at the headquarters of Europol, WSKtA and NCA. They were an opportunity to exchange experiences and know-how in the field of criminal and strategic analysis, and also provided an opportunity to strengthen cooperation;
- during the project there were 13 specialized training courses conducted by Polish and foreign speakers (including OLAF, EUROPOL, UN, FBI). So far, 161 participants from the CBA and partnering institutions have participated in the trainings, which have improved their competences in areas such as counteracting money laundering, effective data analysis, intelligence led policing and the implementation of artificial intelligence in the fight against crime. These are just some of the topics of the training sessions.
To sum up the whole project, it should be emphasized that it has become an effective tool for inter-institutional cooperation and the transfer of knowledge and experience at the national and international level between LEAs, the scientific community and independent experts representing the private sector.
We would like to thank all participants of the project events for their participation and involvement in individual initiatives.
NFM Project Team 2014-2021 at CBA