Join Delphine Forma, Head of Policy at Solidus Labs, as she sits down with Toms Platacis, Head of Latvia's Financial Intelligence Unit and Head of Delegation to both MONEYVAL and FATF.

They explore what financial crime investigation really looks like from inside a frontline FIU — from tracking funds across banks, crypto exchanges, self-hosted wallets, and DeFi protocols, to coordinating intelligence across borders and preparing a country for FATF mutual evaluation. A rare, unfiltered view from one of Europe's most respected financial intelligence authorities on where financial crime is heading and what it takes to stay ahead of it.

They discuss:

• the mission of Latvia's FIU and how financial intelligence units fit within the broader AML/CFT framework — their relationships with regulators, law enforcement, and the private sector
• the financial crime trends concerning the FIU most today — and how the threat landscape has evolved over the past few years
• how new technologies have changed both criminal behaviour and the investigative tools FIUs rely on
• how the movement of funds across banks, payment providers, crypto exchanges, self-hosted wallets, money mules, and DeFi protocols has changed the nature of financial crime investigation
• real typologies and investigations that illustrate how financial crime is evolving on the ground
• whether crypto is actually making criminals' lives easier — or sometimes making investigators' lives easier — from a frontline FIU perspective
• the most common crypto-related money laundering and sanctions circumvention typologies Latvia's FIU is seeing today, with concrete examples
• how Latvia is approaching DeFi in practice, including the key takeaways from FATF's recent report on decentralised arrangements that still involve identifiable controlling parties
• whether DeFi is already featuring in real investigations
• how international FIU cooperation actually works in practice — how intelligence is shared and investigations are coordinated across jurisdictions
• how Latvia's public-private partnership model works — and an example where private sector cooperation genuinely changed an investigation's outcome
• what a FATF mutual evaluation is, why it matters, and what it takes to prepare for one
• what it meant for Latvia to be the first country assessed under the new FATF methodology — and the advice Toms would give to other authorities preparing for their own evaluation
• what worries him most looking ahead — and the single message he would leave with compliance professionals

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