Joint investigation teams (JIT) are law enforcement and judicial teams set up jointly by EU national investigative agencies to handle cross-border crime. Joint investigation teams coordinate the investigations and prosecutions conducted in parallel by several countries.

Description

A Joint Investigation Team (JIT) is formed based upon an agreement between competent authorities – both judicial (judges, prosecutors, investigative judges) and law enforcement – of two or more member states of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...

(EU). They can be backed up by Eurojust and Europol, the EU judicial and law enforcement agencies. Their terms of operation are based on Europol's Model Agreement for Setting up a Joint Investigation Team, as appended to Council of Europe Resolution 2017/C 18/01.

History

After the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014, a joint investigation team conducting criminal investigation with representatives from Australia,

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

, the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

and

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian invas ...

was formed. A JIT was formed in April 2020 by the French

National Gendarmerie The National Gendarmerie (french: Gendarmerie nationale, ) is one of two national law enforcement forces of France, along with the National Police (France), National Police. The Gendarmerie is a branch of the French Armed Forces placed under the ...

and the Dutch police to investigate the secure communication service EncroChat, used by some 60,000 subscribers at the time of its closure; nearly all of them were criminals.

References

External links

{{law-enforcement-stub Criminal investigation International criminal law Teams Collaboration Malaysia Airlines Flight 17