Financial Crime Matters

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. “Loved ones have a responsibility to look out for one another,” Liz tells Kieran in describing how families should adopt a strategy to protect all their members from financial crime. With the rise in digital banking, Liz argues for a “fight fire with fire” strategy that relies on fintech to prevent and detect fraud and other criminal threats. Along the way, Liz also addresses what’s real and what’s not with regard to the abuse of older people in the Netflix movie “I Care a Lot”

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 actors, he also describes some of the interlinked extremist groups that are raising funds with merchandise and festival ticket sales as well as criminal actions with an eye to enabling financial institutions to identify funds associated with these extremists.

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 federal response to money laundering, and his optimism that Canada is addressing financial crime.

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 address human trafficking, since it is a form of commerce, according to Sara, who shares some of the typologies that can help financial institutions identify the proceeds of trafficking. Finally, Sara calls on banks and other financial enterprises to join the fight against trafficking as invaluable partners with law enforcement and organizations like Polaris.

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 identifies some of the organizations, facilitators and financiers engaged in illicit trade. While crediting the financial services industry with taking steps to stem illicit trade, she calls on the industry and others to do more, not least by joining with law enforcement and others in effective public private partnerships focused on illicit trade.

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 Commission. Find out more at: https://www.acams.org/en/events/conferences/sanctions-space-summit. And subscribe to Justine’s podcast at www.soundcloud.com/sanctionsspace to hear more of the stories behind sanctions.

“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 financial crime. A lawyer with Estonia’s FSA since 2012 and head of the authority’s AML/CFT department for the past two-years, Maeker also shares lessons from the “AML Compliance Book: 150 Golden Rules,” which he has just co-authored with his colleague Andre Nomm. A member of the MONEYVAL Bureau and also an alternate member of the European Banking Authority Anti-Money Laundering Standing Committee, Matis has been a speaker at a number of ACAMS conferences. His “AML Compliance Book: 150 Golden Rules”is available from a number of sources, including Amazon.com.

“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 public-private partnership (PPP) that combats the online sexual exploitation of children in all it’s forms. Co-lead by Scotiabank and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, and with the support of Fintrac, Project Shadow seeks to raise awareness, identify red flags, and increase reporting of suspicious transactions associated with the exploitation of children. Formally launched this month, Project Shadow is the fifth Canadian PPP created since 2016, when “Project Protect” was launched to fight human trafficking.

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 for art and antiquities dealers as well what to expect from the regulation writing process necessary to flesh out the Act over the next several years.

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, and traced illicit money flows from the Kremlin to Washington. Read Tom’s bio: https://tomburgis.com