The Secretary General of the World Customs Organization (WCO), Kunio Mikuriya, and the Secretary General of INTERPOL, Jurgen Stock, met at the WCO Headquarters on 12 January 2016 to advance and enhance coordination and mutual cooperation in fighting transnational organized crime. INTERPOL and the WCO routinely collaborate under a framework of cooperation formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding.
The WCO and INTERPOL have a long history of cooperation, especially in the fight against crime and cross-border criminal activities such as trafficking in drugs or fake medicines, illegal logging and illegal trade in cultural goods, and the meeting between the Secretaries General will further strengthen the partnership between Customs and Police at the international and national level.
The Secretaries General emphasized the critical requirement of Customs/Police cooperation in order to successfully combat transnational threats, coordinate border management in the fight against criminal organizations, and to impact these organizations in a manner that diminishes their capabilities.
The Secretaries General reaffirmed the roles and mandates of their respective organizations, agreed to coordinate their activities more efficiently at the international level, emphasized the need for Customs and Police to work together more closely at the national level, and committed to enhancing future cooperation and coordination between the WCO and INTERPOL.
In that regard, the Secretaries General agreed to actively coordinate and contribute to the goal of enhanced cooperation through the newly established WCO Information and Intelligence Center (i2c) in Brussels, Belgium and INTERPOL’s three Command and Coordination Centers (CCC) in Lyon, France, the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation in Singapore and in its Regional Bureau in Buenos Aires.
The exchange of information between these centers will enhance future cooperation and strengthen Customs and Police teamwork which is paramount in maximizing mutual law enforcement actions.