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SECI Regional Centre for Combating Transborder Crime Print E-mail

The Southeast European Cooperative Initiative Regional Centre for Combating Trans-border Crime - SECI Centre has been established in 1999 as a follow up of the signature of the Agreement on Cooperation to Prevent and Combat Trans-border Crime by the SECI participating states, concluded within the framework of the Border Crossing Facilitation Project Group.

Within the framework of the latter a special emphasis was laid on cooperation in the field of justice and home affairs, i.e more specifically on combating cross-border crime and corruption. This program was based on two considerations:

  • trans-national criminal activities are detrimental to the social and economic development of the region;
  • coming to grips with these well-organized cross-border activities requires border enforcement and law enforcement agencies in the region to cooperate closely in efforts at interdiction and measures to apprehend those engaged in these criminal activities and to bring them to justice.

The principal criminal activity of mutual concern was smuggling. It included smuggling of goods lawfully in possession of the smuggler, but smuggled with the aim of evading customs duties. This presupposed stolen items, illegal trafficking of drugs, people, small arms, and precursors or ingredients for weapons of mass destruction. Border personnel must be able to detect, identify and interdict all these categories of smuggled goods. Therefore a unified effort to deal with these six types was undertaken by the SECI States, since at the moment, there was a great deal of international concern over the operation of international organised crime networks, particularly those that smuggle drugs, people, and weapons of mass destruction.

At its April 15, 1998 meeting in Geneva, the SECI Agenda Committee adopted a Romanian proposal for SECI to engage in a concerted effort to combat cross-border crime. At this meeting a project group was also established. The working group, which met in Bucharest from May 1998 to May 1999 produced an Agreement on Co-operation to Prevent and Combat Trans-Border Crime. Incorporated in the Agreement was a Charter of Organization and Operation of the SECI Regional Center for Combating Trans-border Crime. Having been signed in late May of 1999, the Agreement has been submitted for ratification to the parliaments of the signatory states and has eventually been ratified by all the SECI member states. On the basis of the before-mentioned Agreement, a Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC), consisting of representatives of the signatory states was established. INTERPOL and the World Customs Organization (WCO) served as permanent advisers. The SECI Coordinator has a seat on the table of the JCC and provides, upon necessity, policy support and guidance as well as support in terms of streamlining activities with other European bodies.  The JCC was tasked with administering the Agreement and also serves as "the highest institutional body of the SECI Center." Each Participating State is represented at the JCC by two law enforcement officers, one from the customs service, the other from the police. This is one of the characteristics that distinguished the SECI Center from other operational entities of such type, since it is the first regional body that brings together and at the same table representatives from both police and customs. The exchange of information "in real time" was to become one of the activities undertaken under the umbrella of the Agreement and one of the main operational activities of the SECI Center.

On September 30, the Government of Romania established a legal entity authorized to construct the Headquarters of the SECI Center, which is now located in the Romanian Parliament building in Bucharest, Romania. The SECI Center marked its official opening on November 16, 1999. In March of 2000, a week-long training was held for the customs and police liaison officers from the participating and support states at the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in Budapest, Hungary in preparation for their work at the SECI Center.

Since then, the signatory states of the SECI Center cooperate in proactive measures to pursue organized crime groups. The SECI Center also operates on the basis of task forces, focusing on specific organised and trans-border crime issues. The first four task forces targeted narcotics, trafficking of human beings, customs fraud and stolen vehicles.

Today, the SECI Centre represents a full-fledged inter-governmental regional body which deals with a number of regional activities concerning organized crime issues within the SEE and has a number of task forces, working on the elaboration of regional analyses of organized crime trends and on finding solutions for combating the new challenges in this field. It has also developed its own internal procedures that followed the development of its activities and is continuously working on the enhancement of its own efficiency and effectiveness.

 

SECI Center Contacts

Mr. Mitja Mocnik
Director

3-5, Calea 13 Septembrie str., sector 5,
050711 Bucharest, Romania
Tel.: +40 21 303 6009
Fax: +40 21 303 6077
E-mail: secretariat@secicenter.org
www.secicenter.org

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