Paul O'Donoghue, Senior Correspondent
Dutch officials have developed a new AI (artificial intelligence) chatbot to assist financial crime investigators.
The Dutch Fiscal Information and Research Services (FIOD) said the tool allows law enforcement to quickly sort large quantities of data.
“FIOD conducted research into how AI can contribute to criminal investigations,” the organization said in its 2024 annual report.
“One experiment included a smart chatbot to help with questions about the research procedure. [It] Provides interpretations of laws and regulations, and references to related case law. ”
The agency also said it was looking at other ways to use AI to combat financial crime.
“Another experiment includes AI tools that can help analyze large amounts of communication messages. These include seized phones and laptops,” Fiod said.
“The tool can identify connections between messages that may be overlooked purely through manual analysis.
“This research toolkit will continue to be developed further over the next few years.”
The agency added that AI tools can “inspect exponentially increasing amounts of seized data more quickly and effectively.”
Fiod is the latest in a series of European financial crime groups that have begun using AI.
Bafin, the German financial information unit, made a similar announcement in June. It says it will help you use AI to find suspicious patterns of market abuse and trading.
French officials have also begun using AI. France discovered a scam of 16.7 billion euros in 2024, twice the amount detected five years ago. The rise was due to “increased use of AI targeting” during the investigation.
Fiod's 2024 annual report states that agents are increasingly focusing on digital research.
“Digital expertise is currently essential to the research process,” he said.
“Fiod employs many individuals who have made careers from professional digital research.
“In 2024, for example, FioD gained extensive expertise in the flow of money through the blockchain and cryptocurrency seizures.”
He also said that partnering with the university will “expand our digital expertise even further.”
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