Other Forms of Cooperation

Basis and means for co-operation in confiscation, mutual assistance and extradition

Recommendation 33
Countries should try to ensure, on a bilateral or multilateral basis, that different knowledge standards in national definitions - i.e. different standards concerning the intentional element of the infraction - do not affect the ability or willingness of countries to provide each other with mutual legal assistance. (See Interpretative Note)

Recommendation 34
International co-operation should be supported by a network of bilateral and multilateral agreements and arrangements based on generally shared legal concepts with the aim of providing practical measures to affect the widest possible range of mutual assistance.

Recommendation 35
Countries should be encouraged to ratify and implement relevant international conventions on money laundering such as the 1990 Council of Europe Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime.

Interpretative Note to Recommendation 33
Subject to principles of domestic law, countries should endeavour to ensure that differences in the national definitions of the money laundering offences -- e.g., different standards concerning the intentional element of the infraction, differences in the predicate offences, differences with regard to charging the perpetrator of the underlying offence with money laundering -- do not affect the ability or willingness of countries to provide each other with mutual legal assistance.

Suspicious transactions

Improved mutual assistance