Takeaways on closed case reviews in financial investigation of illegal wildlife trade

Speaker: Mark Williams, Programme Manager for the Organised Crime and Policing Team (OCP), The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

• The Royal United Services Institute shared the lessons learned from applying the close case method, as they pioneering on a new training technique in illegal wildlife trade, conducting multiagency reviews of closed cases to identify financial investigation leads. More information is available in the full report.

• Benefits from the implementation of the closed case method include the drives to active learning, the enhancement of critical thinking skills, and opportunities to identify financial investigations unexplored during the original investigation. Details about the methodology and the case selection criteria were shared, mentioning the importance of the age of the case, value, volume, species, accessibility, novelty, and evidence.

• The multi-agency approach, including the judiciary, private sector and Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) participation, is crucial. The involvement of the private sector in case reviews fosters real-world collaboration in sharing actionable intelligence. Still, the role of national FIUs is still poorly understood by other agencies and needs to be well-defined at the start of any case review process.

The full recording of the presentation from the 17 January Follow-the-Money Working Group meeting is available here: