In order to increase the capacity of its civil society and government partners to monitor, diagnose and tackle corruption risks, the R2G4P initiative is holding its second internal three-day regional training on 18-20 May 2022 in Budapest. While the first training was structured around the initiative’s key methodologies, the current one explores new topics and areas, such as:

• The conceptual framework of illicit finance and offshore wealth;
• The role of the Financial Intelligence Units in the fight against illicit finance, money laundering and terrorist financing;
• The use of big data and online surveys for assessing corruption risks;
• Best practices for achieving impact through policy research and advocacy.

During the first day of the training, the speakers underlined the need of stronger money laundering controls, automatic exchange of tax information, public disclosure of beneficial ownership, cash-payment limits and country level reporting of company revenues. The detection of illicit financial flows and prevention of profit shifting towards tax heavens could further be achieved through stricter and more regular monitoring over shell companies, the mispricing of invoices, and the transactions with large denominations banknotes and cryptocurrencies. The new Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA), proposed in July 2021, could provide solutions to these long-standing issues, through EU level supervision over large financial institutions, as well as through support of joint analysis, prioritization of cases and their follow up. The second and third day were dedicated to the use of big data for assessing corruption risks in public procurement, detecting irregularities in politically-connected companies and improving the process of checking asset declarations. Through hands-on training the participants learned how to create and use online surveys, as well as how to match and clean data in statistical software such as R. The training concluded with valuable tips on how the R2G4P initiative could achieve advocacy and impact through cooperation with policy-makers and other stakeholders.