National Bureau of Investigation (Finland)

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) (Finnish: Keskusrikospoliisi (KRP), Swedish: Centralkriminalpolisen (CKP)) is a nationwide law enforcement agency of the Finnish Police operating in the whole territory of Finland. NBI's main tasks are to counter organized crime, investigate offences thereto, provide expert services, and develop methods for criminal investigation. The NBI is also responsible for taking measures on detecting and preventing money laundering and on freezing assets to combat terrorism.

NBI Headquarters has been situated in the city of Vantaa since 1994 with field offices in Tampere, Joensuu, Oulu, Turku and Rovaniemi. NBI also carries out duties transferred to the Bureau by the Act on the Autonomy of Åland.

Mission

In addition to the offences the NBI has exposed, it investigates also the following:

• other offences that come to the Bureau's attention and particularly, criminal cases of major importance to society or that have precedent character - e.g. corruption, securities, money laundering, environment, IT and cyber crime;
• homicides with likely connections to organised crime;
• terrorist offences, unless otherwise agreed with the Finnish Security Intelligence Service; and
• cases especially delegated by the National Police Board.

When necessary, NBI supports the local police in the first steps of homicide investigations and in coordination of preliminary actions of major cybercrime investigations.

• The Bureau takes part in major disaster investigations through the Finnish Disaster Victim Identification Team (DVI).
• The NBI is in charge of cooperation in the field of PCB (Police Customs Border) criminal intelligence in line with the cooperation agreement made between the Police, Customs and the Border Guard. The activities are organised around the National PCB Criminal Intelligence Centre supported by the PCB Intelligence Units specialised in air traffic, sea traffic and cross-border traffic.
• NBI serves as the national authority in international police cooperation and hosts the national centres of Interpol, Europol and Schengen cooperation.
• NBI creates forensic analyses and harmonises analytical methods. The Bureau also develops, tests and approves new forensic investigation methods, equipment, devices and materials introduced to the police force.^[2]

Organisation

The organisation is divided into the following divisions and lines of work:^[3]

• Administration
• Criminal Investigation
• Criminal Intelligence
• Forensic Laboratory

Most of the Bureau's personnel serve as law enforcement agents (60 %) who serve mainly in investigative and intelligence duties. Civilian staff include experts like chemists, laboratory assistants, clerks, engineers and linguists.^[1]

NBI hosts field offices in Tampere, Turku, Maarianhamina, Joensuu, Oulu and Rovaniemi.^[4] The NBI headquarters houses the Crime Museum. The Museum holds about 6 000 pieces of criminal history including tools used in crimes, objects related to punishment, documents and photos - with most of the collections from the 20th century. The Museum is not open to the public.^[5]

News coverage

In July 2015, NBI was negotiating with Italian company Hacking Team to purchase encryption evasion and surveillance tools usually employed by law enforcement and intelligence services.^[6][7]

NBI was in the process of investigating large scale fraud in which a malware program was used to transfer about 900 000 euros from Finnish citizens and companies to offenders abroad in June 2015. The investigation was being conducted jointly with, among others, Austrian, Belgian and Dutch law enforcement.^[8]

A new unit targeting cyber crime was established at the Bureau's headquarters in April 2015. The unit was preliminarily staffed with 45 persons and will work in close cooperation with Europol. United State's law enforcement will also be a crucial partner since data companies like Google and Facebook are on United States soil. The unit's chief named focused cyber attacks as Finland's greatest threat at the time.^[9]

In 2014, NBI received 23 062 reports of money laundering – of which 11 were reported to be connected to terrorism. In continuative investigations the Bureau confiscated 11.5 million euros of criminal proceeds and exposed 44 individual criminal networks.^[10]

On December 2015, NBI Assistant Director commented that the Bureau is browsing through large amount of details in relation to presumed war crimes conducted outside of Finland. Earlier, NBI had started an investigation on two asylum seekers for 11 cases of murder in Iraq, and the Assistant Director did not exclude that further cases may surface. He furthermore noted that the essential action at the moment is to collect findings into a system to support decision-making and to form a daily situational picture. He did not clarify on the system or the privileges attached to it.^[11] Likewise in December 2015, NBI announced an investigation relating to an application possibly collecting personal data illegally from Facebook. The software that combines Facebook and other public source data had been traced to Belorusian developers.^[12]

NBI came under public pressure after it was reported that the Bureau had collected mostly unauthentic information into an internal intelligence database.^[13][14] Between 2009 and 2014, a total of 10 000 people were reported to have been recorded into the database without legitimate grounds or a court decision.^[14] Russian president Vladimir Putin was one of the persons recorded after his interaction with motorcycle club Night Wolves MC. Courts have since determined that the database was lacking proper controls and was vulnerable for unauthorized use.^[15] It was speculated in the media that having a record in the database could cause financial losses and social exclusion for the subject – who had no means to verify or be aware if s/he had been recorded.^[14]

References

See also

• Crime in Finland
• Finnish Border Guard
• Finnish Security Intelligence Service
• Law enforcement in Finland
• Police brutality in Finland
• Police of Finland

External links

• Official website