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Public Order
drug production sites outside Hong Kong. Twenty illicit drug manufacturing plants or storage in the Asian region were also dismantled.
Financial Investigation
The Financial Investigations Division and the Joint Financial Intelligence Unit (JFIU) under the NB carried out operations against money laundering and terrorist financing activities in 2012. A total of 160 people were convicted of money laundering, some $768 million worth of criminal assets was impounded and around $41 million of laundered money was confiscated.
The police continued to play an active role at international and local meetings on anti-money laundering matters under the Financial Action Task Force and the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG). The JFIU held two anti-money laundering seminars with the UK HM Revenue & Customs and the Australian Federal Police respectively in April and May 2012, at which anti- money laundering issues and financial investigation techniques were discussed.
Illegal Immigration
In 2012, 2,042 illegal immigrants were arrested, a decrease of 6.2 per cent compared with 2,178 in 2011. The number of non-ethnic Chinese illegal immigrants arrested rose to 414, an increase of 55.6 per cent compared with 266 in 2011. The police continued to work with other government departments in combating illegal immigration and maintained close liaison and co-operation with the Guangdong Border Defence Bureau to strengthen enforcement at the boundary.
Crime Prevention
The Crime Prevention Bureau continued to provide advice on crime prevention measures through publicity campaigns that made use of a broad spectrum of media. The ongoing partnership with the local security industry continued to contribute to high service quality of security companies and their personnel.
Forensic Support
The Identification Bureau (IB) plays an important role in supporting crime investigations and prosecutions by providing fingerprint collection and photography services and collecting DNA evidence from crime scenes. In 2012, it established 61,431 individuals' criminal histories, linking 1,605 people to 1,425 criminal cases.
The Sexual Conviction Record Check scheme, implemented by the IB, provides employers with a reliable channel to ascertain whether applicants applying for work relating to children or mentally incapacitated persons have any sexual conviction records.
Following the pilot scheme initiated since 2008, IB implemented the force-wide rollout of the Digital Photography Scheme for all minor crime, traffic and Magistrates Court cases in July. Since implementation, the police have used digital photography in 2,466 cases for the Magistrates
Courts.
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