UNODC promotes a regional collaboration to generate the global methodology for measuring illicit financial flows
From November 20th to 22nd 2018, a Regional Technical Meeting on the Measurement of Illicit Financial Flows (FFIs) related to criminal activities was held in Mexico City. This meeting arises from indicator 16.4.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which was defined to measure the “total value of illicit inward and outward financial flows (in current United States dollars)”.
This meeting was jointly organized by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) through the Centre of Excellence in Statistical Information on Government, Crime, Victimization and Justice (CoE) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD); and was attended by representatives of government statistical, banking, financial and security institutions from Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Panama and Peru as well as the International Monetary Fund and the Transcrime Research Centre.
A fruitful collaboration was fostered among the participating countries through the presentation and discussion of a statistical methodological framework for the estimation of IFFs related to specific illegal activities. Finally, national work plans were developed and agreed to conduct pilot IFFs measurement activities during 2019. The IFFs measurement statistical framework is a methodological tool designed for countries to collect and/or generate the necessary data for the estimation and calculate the value of inward and outward IFFs, with technical support from UNODC, through the Centre of Excellence.