- Criminal networks exploit legal and operational differences across Caribbean jurisdictions, making isolated national responses insufficient to disrupt illicit financial flows.
- That is why Joint Investigation Teams can help investigators, prosecutors, customs authorities, and financial intelligence units work across borders in real time to trace assets and recover criminal proceeds.
- Building on this approach, the IDB Group’s ONE Caribbean regional program is supporting training, legal frameworks, and partnerships that can help turn Joint Investigation Teams into a practical regional tool.
Transnational organized crime is one of the Caribbean’s most pressing security and development challenges. Criminal networks are moving illicit goods, money, and people across borders with increasing sophistication, contributing to high regional scores on the Global Organized Crime Index for cocaine trade (6.81), arms trafficking (5.12), and human trafficking (4.42).
Because these networks span multiple jurisdictions, no single country can effectively address them alone. Reducing their reach requires a joint regional approach to prevent people from being drawn into crime and cut off the money that keeps criminal networks running, an agenda that the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Group has been supporting through its ONE Caribbean regional program. The IDB Group comprises the IDB, IDB Invest and IDB Lab.
The Core Challenge: Financial Crime
At the heart of organized crime is the pursuit of illicit gain. Money laundering, corruption, and illegal trafficking allow criminal groups to deceive and manipulate financial systems for profit and expansion. These criminals actively exploit the legal and operational differences between Caribbean economies to evade justice, divert public resources away from essential services like schools, healthcare, and community safety, and erode people’s trust in the financial and regulatory institutions that protect their savings, businesses, and daily lives.
Towards a Regional Solution: Joint Investigation Teams
Just as criminal networks collaborate across borders, law enforcement, prosecutors, customs authorities, and financial intelligence units must be able to do the same to hit criminals where it hurts most: their wallets.
One promising mechanism is the use of Joint Investigation Teams (JITs) to support Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery (FIAR), an approach focused on "taking the profit out of crime". First developed in Europe, JITs allow investigators and prosecutors from different jurisdictions to work together as a single operational team.
Rather than relying solely on traditional mutual legal assistance processes, JITs facilitate real-time cooperation, enabling authorities to share intelligence more quickly, coordinate investigative actions, and pursue illicit assets across multiple jurisdictions.
For the Caribbean, the value of this approach extends beyond operational efficiency by providing a practical mechanism to overcome fragmentation and strengthen cross-border cooperation.
Turning Strategy into Action
ONE Caribbean regional program is helping to put this model into practice across the region. Through its ONE Safe Caribbean initiative, which contributes directly to the IDB’s Alliance for Security, Justice and Development, ONE Caribbean has been supporting efforts to strengthen regional cooperation on Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery (FIAR). Over the past year alone, more than 180 practitioners from across the region have participated in specialized training programs on JITs focused on FIAR through a combination of in-person and virtual workshops.
But capacity building is only part of the solution. For JITs to become a sustainable and effective tool, they must be supported by common legal frameworks, operational procedures, and institutional arrangements. Recognizing this need, ONE Caribbean co-convened a Caribbean Legal Experts Forum in Barbados in May 2026, bringing together Attorneys General, prosecutors, policymakers, and regional practitioners to advance the development of a regional model legal framework for JITs.
Over two days, participants examined legal, operational, and institutional requirements needed to support cross-border investigations in a region characterized by diverse legal traditions. Discussions focused on identifying practical solutions to jurisdictional barriers, information-sharing challenges, and operational coordination issues.
The outcome marked an important milestone for regional cooperation. Participants identified the core elements for the first Caribbean model framework for JITs focused on Financial Investigations and Asset Recovery (FIAR), and agreed on next steps to test the approach through a pilot exercise supported by ONE Caribbean.
Partnerships that Deliver
This initiative demonstrates another important lesson about regional cooperation: meaningful results require broad partnerships. Alongside the IDB, the Regional Security System (RSS), CARICOM Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS), the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF), and the Asset Recovery Inter-Agency Network for the Caribbean (ARIN-CARIB) are contributing their expertise to strengthen information sharing and asset recovery cooperation.
Development partners, including the United Kingdom's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), are providing financial support to ONE Caribbean, while academic institutions such as The University of the West Indies are helping to build a sustainable pipeline of regional expertise. At the national level, law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, customs authorities, and financial intelligence units remain at the center of implementation efforts.
This combination of regional institutions, national authorities, development partners, and academia reflects a strong recognition that effective regional cooperation depends not only on agreements but also on trusted networks and shared capabilities.
From Cooperation to Impact
The development of JITs is ultimately about more than financial investigations and asset recovery. It is part of a broader effort to build a more connected, resilient, and capable Caribbean—one that can tackle shared challenges through practical cooperation, strengthen institutions, protect development gains, and create safer communities across the region.
By establishing common approaches and strengthening operational capabilities, the region is improving its ability to trace illicit assets, accelerate investigations, and enhance coordination among law enforcement, prosecutors, and financial intelligence authorities. At the same time, it is creating stronger foundations for collaboration with partners across Latin America, North America, and Europe, positioning the Caribbean to engage more effectively in the increasingly interconnected fight against financial crime.
To learn more about the IDB Group’s ONE Caribbean regional program, visit the ONE Caribbean webpage or watch this video: