Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, through what secure means financial intelligence units of Egmont Group members exchange information; and how that means of exchange differs from information exchange through FIU.net.

Egmont Group members share financial intelligence through a dedicated secure network. Egmont Group membership consists of approximately 147 countries and jurisdictions and is underpinned by the principles of the Egmont Charter to which members are signatories. The service enables secure transmission of messages together with attachments and is email based.

FIU.Net is a European Union initiative which is available to the National Financial Intelligence Units of all EU Member States. FIU.Net provides a secure method of requesting and sharing financial intelligence between Member States. FIU.Net allows for transmission of messages together with attachments via dedicated secure servers in each jurisdiction. FIU.Net provides UK law enforcement agencies with additional functionality over Egmont secure web, such as anonymised case and data matching.

The UK’s domestic legislation allows for the exchange of intelligence data with overseas partners. Council Decision 2000/642/JHA provides a gateway for those member states, in the absence of specific domestic gateway legislation, to exchange data lawfully and efficiently. As a signatory to the decision the UK is able to exchange relevant information with countries lacking domestic gateway legislation.

If we ceased to be bound by the Framework Decision we may lose access to FIU.net. Further, we would no longer benefit from the deadlines for prompt exchange of information provided by the 'Swedish Initiative' (FD 2006/960/JHA) in conjunction with FD 2000/642/JHA.