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Fighting Economic Crime in the Baltics Fact Sheet released by the Bureau of European Affairs U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, July 27, 2000

Modern technology has enabled crime and corruption to spread on an international level, including in the Baltic Sea Region. One of the priorities under the Northern Europe Initiative, therefore, has been to help law enforcement institutions in the region use modern technical means to fight such crimes.

From July 12-14, the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI organized a workshop in Riga, Latvia, on investigating and prosecuting criminal fraud. The multi-national workshop, which was widely attended by prosecutors, judges, police investigators, and banking regulators from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, was designed to train participants in effective methods of investigation of economic crime, including bank fraud, customs fraud, securities fraud, corporate crime, and internet crime.

In addition to the training provided by U.S. law officials, an important element of the workshop was the participants' ability to exchange their own ideas and experiences. As U.S. Ambassador to Latvia, James Holmes, stated at the workshop, it is "only by joint work and by learning from each other that we can effectively fight corruption."
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