Financial Crime Matters

‘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 oligarchs, and international crime networks. Mike and Spencer detail their investigative methods and describe the systemic failures that led to billions of dollars of dirty money being funnelled through the global financial system. Read Mike’s bio: https://www.icij.org/journalists/michael-hudson Read Spencer’s bio: https://www.icij.org/journalists/spencer-woodman

'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 trafficking, and help the victims of modern slavery re-enter the global financial system. FAST has partnered with ACAMS to provide the anti-human trafficking training and certification program “Fighting Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.” For more about FAST and the free ACAMS training go here https://www.fastinitiative.org and here https://www.acams.org/en/training/certificates/fighting-modern-slavery-and-human-trafficking.

'I could see in plain sight that there were dots to be joined' Clare Rewcastle Brown first broke the 1MDB scandal in 2015, and has followed and reported on all of the developments ever since, in the Sarawak Report. In this episode Clare talks with Kieran about the latest fallout from 1MDB, the scale and scope of the corruption, and how banks can do more to detect these crimes in the early stages. Find the Sarawak Report at: https://www.sarawakreport.org

Sam Cooper is an investigative journalist who has dedicated his career to exposing moneylaundering in British Columbia. From moneylaundering operations in Canadian casinos, to Chinese millionaires smuggling in cash to buy swathes of Vancouver real estate (but not to live in), Sam talks Kieran through the financial crime typologies, scams and trends he's observed during his investigations in recent years. Follow Sam on Twitter for more scoops: https://twitter.com/scoopercooper

‘All too often criminal investigations hit a dead end when law enforcement encounters a company with hidden ownership’. In this episode, Edward Kitt (Illicit Finance Policy Lead at the British Embassy in Washington DC) and Kieran talk about the UK’s public beneficial ownership register, tangible benefits of the public-private partnership group JMLIT, and how effective global information sharing might be the answer to solving both new, and cold, cases in human trafficking, moneylaundering, art & antiquities trafficking…and more. Read the full UK Economic Crime plan at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/economic-crime-plan-2019-to-2022

Michael Sachs talks to Kieran Beer about the cutting-edge work that the Manhattan District Attorney's office is doing to take down cybercrime. From scams involving Michael Jordan sneakers and black market Xanax, to a crypto armed robbery, he's seen it all. Their discussion also cover the ambiguities of this new world, including ongoing tensions between law enforcement and tech companies around device encryption, and the due diligence (or otherwise) being undertaken by innovative exchange channels like Bitcoin ATMs. See Michael's bio at: https://www.manhattanda.org/about-the-office/executive-team/

'These tools make it harder, costlier and riskier [for rogue actors] to move money around the world.' In this episode, Juan Zarate explains why sanctions shouldn’t be treated like a light switch, what he thinks about the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, and why financial tools are at the heart of national security efforts. In one of Financial Crime Matters' most wide-ranging interviews, Kieran Beer also asks Juan to comment on the delicate balance between privacy and transparency, and finally…what keeps him up at night. While at the US Treasury, Juan Zarate advised the White House on Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, and led the global hunt for Saddam Hussein’s assets. He is the author of 'Treasury's War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare' (2013), the Chairman and Co-Founder of the Financial Integrity Network, and the Senior National Security Analyst for NBC News. Read his full biography here: https://www.finintegrity.com/juan-c-zarate

‘We can continue to see them as an adversary or threat…and [still] negotiate an end to their nuclear program’. In this episode, recorded in February before the scale of the global COVID-19 outbreak became apparent, Kieran Beer and Adam Szubin discuss the effectiveness of sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, and the Kingpin Act. A sanctions insider for many years, Adam Szubin has a distinguished history of service with the US Treasury, including nine years as the Director of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). As one of the architects of the JCPOA, he’s uniquely placed to comment on the current US administration’s shifts in sanctions policy, and the effect they’re having on geopolitics – far beyond the borders of Iran. Adam Szubin Biography: https://sais.jhu.edu/users/aszubin1

In the first episode of Financial Crime Matters Season 2, Anton Moiseienko and Kayla Izenman of RUSI talk to Kieran Beer about their recent report on money laundering in the online gaming world (Fortnite, Clash of Clans and others). Hear how third party marketplaces are being used to exchange game currency (bought with illegal funds) for fiat currency, how financial institutions can spot this activity, and what the regulatory response has been so far. Read the full RUSI report here: https://rusi.org/publication/rusi-newsbrief/gaming-system-money-laundering-through-online-games"

In Vancouver there are many high-end apartments where the lights never go on... In 2018/2019, Professor Maureen Maloney led an expert panel investigating Money Laundering in British Columbia's real estate sector. The expert panel reported that up to $5.3 billion was laundered through the BC real estate market in 2018, raising housing prices by an estimated 5%. In this podcast, the final episode of Financial Crime Matters Season 1, Kieran Beer and Maureen Maloney unpick why British Columbia is so vulnerable to money laundering, and how authorities might move to stop it. Access the expert panel's full report at: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/housing-tenancy/real-estate-bc/consultations/money-laundering