On July 17, 2018 we posted The J5 International Tax Hunt is On! where we discussed that the tax authorities of the UK, US, Australia, Canada and Netherlands have set up a joint committee to improve international enforcement against tax crime and money laundering. The first meeting of the so-called J5 Group (Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement) was held during July 2018 where plans where developed to detect cyber criminals and enablers of offshore tax crime.

The J5 have during the week of November 5th, brought together their leading data scientists, technology experts and investigators in a coordinated push to track down those people who make a living out of facilitating and enabling international tax crime.

The event, known as ‘The Challenge,’ was hosted by the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) in Amsterdam to identify, develop, and test tools, platforms, techniques, and methods that contribute to the mission of the J5. The Challenge focused on identifying professional enablers facilitating offshore tax fraud and financial crime posing a threat to the J5 jurisdictions.

Experts from each country gathered with the mission of optimizing data from a variety of open and investigative sources available to each country, including offshore account information. Using various analytical tools, the teams were tasked to find schemes, identify potential enablers, and propose actions to J5 leadership to address these threats.

At the conclusion of ‘The Challenge,’ each team identified new targets of investigations, developed investigative schemes to address those targets and increased their ability to share information and find similar patterns and targets in the future.

“Financial crime goes across borders,” said Hans van der Vlist, General Director of FIOD. “That is why operational collaboration is essential and possible. The J5 is a great example. The goal of this challenge is to define unknown professional enablers of tax fraud and financial crime.”

In addition to the Challenge, the J5 has already identified and is actively pursuing a number of professional enablers suspected of facilitating significant tax fraud across international boundaries. J5 partners are now working jointly to tackle each of these enablers through coordinated international action. These individuals were identified through intelligence sharing between J5 members since the alliance was formally announced (PDF 212KB)This link will download a file earlier this year in Montreal, Canada.

The J5 has also made progress in identifying websites that enable fraud through the promotion of schemes to hide income and assets offshore. J5 partners have shared intelligence and capability to collectively close in on these enablers by monitoring their users and using that in their investigations into those involved in these schemes.

 

Sources:

Australian Tax Office Canada Revenue Agency