Mr Romulus Nicolae UNGUREANU, International Law Enforcement Advisor with UNODC HTMSS, is supporting the work of UNODC under the STARSOM Project, in providing operational advice, mentoring and building capacity activities to LEA from different countries for a better judicial response on fighting smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons.

Mr Ungureanu joined the EuroMed Justice Programme as a Senior short-term expert, co-coordinator of the team assigned with the development of the deliverable “Joint Investigations, parallel investigations and spontaneous exchange of information in the Euro-Mediterranean Region”.

He is a senior Romanian police officer with more than 20 years of substantial experience, at the international level, in combatting transnational organized crime.  He endorsed developing both policies and practices, on the operational and strategic level, using innovation and technology, to countering organized crime.

For three years he was the Director for Operations at SELEC, an international law enforcement organization. He coordinated the operational activities of MS authorities and regional operations on fighting SOM, TIP, drug trafficking, terrorism, smuggling of counterfeit goods and illicit goods etc. In 2016 he coordinated one of the most extensive operations against irregular migration covering 12 countries and more than 15.000 participating officers. He has also coordinated the Operational Centre at SELEC in the framework of the INTERPOL’s Global Operation Lionfish on drug trafficking.

Previously, for almost seven years, as the Director of the National Agency against Trafficking in Persons (ANITP) and Romanian national anti-trafficking coordinator, he coordinated the national efforts on combatting TIP.  Among other positions, he was Head of the Unit for combating trafficking in children and human organs, within the Romanian National Police, national team leader for combatting smuggling of migrants and for 3 years as part of the Romanian-UK taskforce REFLEX on fighting SOM and TIP, cooperating and working directly with several UK Police forces, as well as Police Services in many other EU Member States.