As part of a wider Swiss-Romanian Cooperation Programme, our International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) has concluded a successful nine-month train-the-trainer (TTT) programme in Bucharest.

Alongside delivering foundational money laundering and asset recovery training to 125 practitioners in total, the programme has certified six new local trainers. Equipped with ICAR’s unique training methodology, they are now ready to independently train their peers and help strengthen financial investigation and asset recovery capacity across Romania.

Building sustainable national capacity

The six trainers certified through the programme include one judge, four prosecutors and one representative of the National Agency for the Management of Seized Assets (ANABI). Fully independently, they will now deliver a further 15 workshops across the country.

This effort will effectively bring the total number of practitioners trained to around 500, including judges, prosecutors, specialists, ANABI inspectors and other relevant practitioners.

This is a clear example of how train-the-trainer programmes are a proven approach to building sustainable national capacity. On one side, certified local trainers help ensure that knowledge and skills continue to be transferred even after a programme concludes. On the other side, participants benefit far more from learning from peers who understand their specific challenges and possibilities.

Two critical legal tools in focus

This time, the programme placed particular emphasis on two areas where practitioners can strengthen their response to financial crime: treating money laundering as a standalone offence and launching financial investigations from the earliest stages of a case.

1. The standalone money laundering offence

A persistent challenge in money laundering investigations is the assumption that prosecutors must first prove or secure a conviction before pursuing money laundering charges.

Under the Council of Europe’s Warsaw Convention (CETS No. 198, Art. 9) and EU Directive (EU) 2018/1673 on combating money laundering by criminal law, a conviction for money laundering actually requires neither a prior nor a simultaneous conviction for the predicate offence, nor that the predicate offence be established or identified with precision: prosecutors need only show that the property derives from criminal activity, not which specific crime generated it.

As one of the newly certified trainers reflected:

I highly valued the new perspective of setting aside the old view of placement, layering and integrating the proceeds of a crime in order to prove money laundering. […] It was very useful the approach of covering as many areas as possible impacted by money laundering, like crypto assets, which I did not know almost anything about before, and asset recovery, which is not a topic very much considered in our practice. I was also very impressed how the concept of multi-stakeholder approach in fighting ML was reflected in setting up the groups for the practical exercise.

2. Systematic use of parallel financial investigations

Another important approach is the systematic use of parallel financial investigations to identify and trace criminal assets from the outset of a case.

This approach is now required under Directive (EU) 2024/1260 on asset recovery and confiscation, which obliges Member States to launch asset-tracing investigations alongside criminal investigations into high-revenue-generating crime, rather than waiting for a conviction before tracing assets.

This shift is already visible in practice. One trainer wrote:

I started talking to my colleagues about financial investigations and money laundering. I managed to send to court my first money laundering case, though not standalone, and I also started asking the police to start financial investigations from the beginning of the file.

From training to real cases

The effect of our training has also reached institutional level. One trainer reported:

The management has started disseminating theoretical and practical materials on these topics, organising meetings and training sessions with practitioners and academics, and actively encouraging prosecutors to consider money laundering and asset recovery aspects in their cases. These initiatives have facilitated increased awareness and engagement within the institution.

This is exactly the dual impact we seek through the Train-the-Trainer model: a sustainable, independently delivered training capacity, paired with a genuine shift in how practitioners approach financial investigations in their daily work and how their institutions prioritise it.

With the first independently delivered workshops planned for September 2026, our ICAR training team looks forward to following the six newly certified trainers and seeing their work generate further impact across Romania.