Kieran talks with Ilze Znotina about the challenges Latvia has faced over the past four years she has been head of the Financial Intelligence Unit, including enforcing sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. “Baltic states have suffered… a very similar situation that Ukraine is suffering right now, [but] thankfully not in recent years,” Ilze says, adding that the region is for that reason united in trying to make the sanctions work. “[Ukraine] fights for themselves and...

Kieran talks with Jessica Davis, a veteran of more than 20 years in defense and intelligence roles in government and the private sector in Canada. They discuss the occupation of Canada’s capitol for three weeks last winter by the so-called “Freedom Convoy,” efforts to support the group via crowdfunding, cryptocurrency, and cash as well as the Canadian government’s successful seizure or freezing of much of that funding. Jessica, president of Insight Threat Intelligence and author of “Illicit...

Kieran talks with John Sifton, advocacy director, and Patti Gossman, associate Asia director, at Human Rights Watch about the dire humanitarian situation in Afghanistan following the return of the Taliban to power. “One in three families is facing food insecurity” from malnourishment to starvation, says Patti, adding that the crisis is affecting not only the already impoverished, but middle-class and working-class people who are no longer paid for their jobs and have no access to their...

Kieran talks with Olivia Swaak-Goldman, executive director of the Wildlife Justice Commission, about the Hague-based organization’s efforts to stop the illegal wildlife trade and other forms of environmental exploitation, currently the fourth largest source of funds for transnational criminal organizations. Olivia discusses how WJC targets traffickers in endangered species and those having the greatest negative environmental impact with its team of former law enforcement investigators,...

Kieran talks with colleague Dr. Justine Walker, Global Head - Sanctions, Compliance and Risk at ACAMS, about the likely shape of sanctions against Russia should it invade Ukraine. In the wake of ACAM’s Second Annual Sanctions Summit, Justine discusses keynote speaker and White House special advisor Peter Harrell’s promise of severe sanctions against Russia should it attack Ukraine and analyzes the Summit buzz about how the United States, United Kingdom and European Union as well as the...

Kieran talks with Anjana Rajan, chief technology officer for Polaris, about the work the not-for-profit does to fight human trafficking, including having helped more than 30,000 trafficking survivors via its national hotline. In looking ahead, Anjana talks about the need to recreate the Internet to end its use by the powerful to exploit the vulnerable, a reality made only worse by the accelerated digitalization of life in the wake of COVID-19. Anjana says the current debate about Web 3, the...

Kieran talks with Dr. Tom Robinson, chief scientist and founder of Elliptic, a blockchain forensics company, about the phenomenal growth of decentralized finance, or DeFi. Offering the promise of a wide array of financial services on an inexpensive and inclusive basis, DeFi also presents a significant fraud and money laundering threat, Tom says. Drawing on Elliptic’s recently released report, “DeFi: Risk, Regulation and the Rise of DeCrime, which he co-wrote, Tom covers the need for...

Kieran talks with Casey Michel about his just published book, “American Kleptocracy,” which details how the United States has become a favored destination for laundering money for corrupt politicians and other criminals. Competition among states such as Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada for fees for forming corporations and trusts as well as carveouts from oversight won by special interest groups are to blame, Casey says. Casey, an investigative journalist who has been published widely,...

Kieran talks with Alex Zerden about his time as Treasury attaché at the United States Embassy in Kabul, the worsening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and the renewed terrorism threat related to the Taliban’s return to power. Alex, the principal and founder of Capital Peak Strategies, a financial technology and digital asset advisory firm, talks about how the United States presence in Afghanistan was marked by corruption connected to an inflow of money the Afghan economy was incapable of...

Kieran talks with Jacqueline Shinfield, partner at Blakes, Cassels & Graydon about the latest legislative and regulatory requirements from Finance Canada and FINTRAC that are part of the nation’s renewed vigor to fight financial crime. Ahead of the ACAMS Annual Canada Conference on 3, 4 November, Jackie and Kieran discuss Canada’s new cost recovery plan’s impact on FINTRAC regulated entities, issues arising from ongoing regulatory examinations, technological gaps in implementing the new...

Kieran talks with Jessica Davis, president of Insight Threat Intelligence and the author of the just released “Illicit Money: Financing Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century.” Jessica discusses her comprehensive book, which is based on her study of some 50 terrorist organizations and terror attacks, in the wake of the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan and the rise of ideologically motivated violent extremist throughout the world. “Attacks are often self-funded” and difficult to track...

Kieran talks with Gurvais Grigg, Chainalysis’ Global Public Sector Chief Technology Officer, about tracking cryptocurrency used in fraud, ransomware and other crimes. Whether exchange traded digital currencies or so-called privacy coins, companies like Chainalysis, in tandem with law enforcement, are increasingly identifying cybercriminals and seizing their illicit funds, says Gurvais, who served more than 23 years with the FBI prior to joining the blockchain forensics company earlier this...

Kieran talks with Elizabeth “Liz” Roper, chief of the Cybercrime and Identity Theft Bureau within the New York County District Attorney’s office. As head of one of the most sophisticated anti-cybercrime labs in the world, Liz details what she sees as the most pressing emerging cybercrime threats and offers encouragement to prosecutors throughout the country who are challenged by spiraling incidents of cybercrime in their communities. “From the day we first open a case, we’re working...

Kieran talks with former prosecutor Liz Loewy, who founded the elder abuse bureau in the New York District Attorney’s office in 1994 and is co-founder and current COO of EverSafe, a company that utilizes financial technology to protect elderly and vulnerable individuals from financial abuse. “Love ones have a responsibility to look out for one another,” Liz tells Kieran in describing how families should adopt a strategy to protect all its members from financial crime. With the rise in...

Kieran talks with Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, about the rising threat from right-wing domestic terror groups. Rooted in varying myths of nationalist identity, right-wing extremist groups are increasingly cooperating with one another across nation state borders, embracing long-discredited tropes that glorify white-supremacy and antisemitism, Hans tells Kieran during their discussion. While identifying some of the self-funding individual violent...

Kieran talks with James Cohen, Executive Director at Transparency International Canada, about what’s wrong with Canada, including the rise in money laundering via “snow washing” and the corrupting influence of illicit foreign fund flows from transnational criminal groups. During their talk, James discusses the battle to establish a corporate ownership registry in Canada, which received initial funding in the nation’s budget released shortly after the interview, the need for a coordinated...

Kieran talks with Sara Crowe, Strategic Initiatives Director for Financial Systems at Polaris, a not-for-profit dedicated to ending sex and human labor trafficking. During their talk, Sara touches on Polaris’ efforts to connect trafficked individuals to law enforcement and social services through its U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline and the use of data drawn from call-ins to the hotline to create frameworks to combat human trafficking. Financial institutions are uniquely positioned to...

Kieran talks with Louise Shelley, PhD, Director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) at George Mason University, about how terrorist organizations are funding themselves by engaging in illicit trade finance, often in partnership with transnational criminal organization. During their discussion, Dr. Shelly, the author of numerous publications whose most recent book is “Dark Commerce: How a New Illicit Economy is Threatening our Future,” shares typologies and...

A special episode for everyone monitoring the critical and shifting sanctions landscape. Kieran interviews Dr Justine Walker (who has her own podcast series ‘The Sanctions Space’) about the recent unprecedented scale of change of sanctions, key emerging trends, and the Biden administration’s potential approach to China, Iran, North Korea and others. Next week we’re also hosting our first ACAMS Global Sanctions Summit, with speakers from White House, World Bank, UN, OFAC and European...

“It will happen to you: sooner or later, all financial institutions will be in the midst of a new scheme or scandal,” Matis Maeker, head of Estonia’s Financial Supervisory Authority warns. Drawing on his experience addressing the scandals involving money laundering out of the Russian Federation and as a leader in Estonia’s effort to build a tougher AML/CFT regime, Matis, talks with Kieran about the challenges faced by both supervisory authorities and the entities they oversee in preventing...

“we were able to identify a number of financial indicators that… really allowed us to identify potential perpetrators of this crime,” Barry MacKillop, Fintrac. “an area being under reported and investigated in Canada and globally,” Stuart Davis, Scotiabank. Kieran talks with Barry MacKillop, deputy director at The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (Fintrac) and Stuart Davis, Scotiabank’s global head of financial crimes risk management, about “Project Shadow,” a...

Kieran talks with Daniel Stipano, a 30-year veteran of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, about the “Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020,” the most revolutionary piece of anti-financial crime legislation to emerge from Congress since the “USA Patriot Act.” Now a partner with the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, Dan details how the Act creates a national corporate ownership registry, new examination criteria for financial institutions and Bank Secrecy Act responsibilities...

Kieran Beer interviews the award-winning Financial Times Investigations Correspondent, Tom Burgis about his new book, ‘Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World’. In this episode, Tom reveals how private bankers, law firms and intelligence groups help dictators, oligarchs and organised crime penetrate democracies, and flood the global economy with dirty money. During his career, Tom has exposed major corruption scandals, covered terrorist attacks, coups and forgotten conflicts,...

‘If you don’t understand who’s behind a shell company, you’re not going to understand what’s going on with a multi-million-dollar transaction moving across borders.’ Mike Hudson and Spencer Woodman, investigative journalists at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), talk with Kieran about the 16 months of reporting that went into making sense of the FinCEN files - more than 2000 leaked SARs linking the world’s biggest banks to Jho Low, Paul Manafort, Russian...

'Everybody has something they can do to begin to address [human trafficking] in their day-to-day business.' Dr. James Cockayne is Head of Secretariat of Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST), a year-old United Nations initiative enlisting financial institutions in the fight against human trafficking. In this episode, James talks with Kieran about how financial institutions can help track and interdict the proceeds of human trafficking, shun investment in businesses that profit from...