Tracking illicit money flows (TRACE)

As organised crime networks operate across borders, use legal loopholes and advanced technology, it is notoriously difficult to detect and trace hidden and illicit money flows. In TRACE, partners will co‐create innovative data management solutions combined with AI analytics to enhance the capabilities of law enforcement agencies in tracing and recovering illicit money flows and generating court‐proof e‐evidence.

TRACE will focus on these key aspects:

• Co-develop and validate innovative technologies to detect and analyse cross-border money flows used by criminals and terrorists;
• Increase efficiency and effectiveness of information sharing among European LEAs to better respond to cross-border financial crimes;
• Design and test innovative training materials for LEAs across Europe;
• Maintain European societal values and fundamental rights by adopting a co-creative and ethics-by-design approach in technology development.

The project will deliver a modular open-source framework for money-laundering investigations which can be tailored to meet LEA end-user needs. It will enable investigators to scrape data from databases and the world wide web in any given language; translate the text into English, analyse it and showcase the results with the help of visualisation technology. Our solution aims to increase the efficiency of information sharing among European LEAs and enhance their innovation potential in detecting and combatting money-laundering operations and financing of organised crime and terrorism.

Participation Condition: Participant

Coordinating Institution: Coventry University

Total Budget: 307,625€

Funding by the European Union, Horizon 2020 Programme, RIA – Research and Innovation action under Grant Agreement number 101022004_TRACE.