# Mutual legal assistance

URL: https://www.transparency.org/en/corruptionary/mutual-legal-assistance
Type: Corruptionary
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-04-25

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### Definition

Mutual Legal Assistance is the formal process of cooperation between two or more jurisdictions, for example on cross-border money laundering, asset recovery and tax evasion cases. Through this cooperation, which is usually enacted through a treaty, a state can ask for and receive assistance in gathering information and evidence from private and public sources for use in official investigations and prosecutions.

### Why it matters

Governments should ensure greater domestic and international inter-agency cooperation to enable more effective and faster cross-border sharing of information.