Having its first meeting held in 1995, EGMONT Group focused on enhancing cooperation and exchanging information between anti-money laundering national units FIU’s at the international level, so as to develop the units technical and institutional abilities to combat money laundering transactions.

EGMONT Group had accomplished three significant achievements in this regards which are: developing information exchange mechanism among national units through internet, providing technical, organizational, and institutional support to national units, and issuing principles related to conditions and cases of information exchange among units which were published in 2001.

The thirteen principles are regarded as the framework for information exchange among member units and encourage information exchange processes for the common benefit. These principals determine the measures and conditions of this process and responsibilities of the concerned parties as well as conditions to use such information.

Basic Principles for Information Exchange between FIUs

- FIU’s must be able to exchange information freely with their foreign counterparts on the basis of reciprocity, or mutual agreement and consistent with procedures understood by the requested and requesting party. Such exchange, either upon request or spontaneously, should produce any available information that may be relevant to an analysis or investigation of financial transactions and other relevant information and the entities involved.

- FIU’s should disclose the reason and the purpose of the requested information and any additional information to enable the receiver FIU to determine whether the request complies with its domestic law or not.

- Information exchanged between FIUs may be used only for the specific purpose for which information were sought or provided.

- FIU’s should not transfer the obtained information to a third party, nor to make use of the information in an administrative, prosecutorial, or judicial purpose without the prior consent of the FIU that disclosed the information.

- All information exchanged by FIUs must be subjected to strict controls and safeguards to ensure that the information is used only in an authorized manner, consistent with national provisions on privacy and data protection. At a minimum, exchanged information must be treated as protected by the same confidentiality provisions as applicable to similar information from domestic sources obtained by the receiving FIU.