Due Diligence Download

Download our free EDD report writing toolkit here - https://ddd-edd-toolkit.netlify.app/ Season 2 closes where it began — with piracy — but the story has changed completely. Sylwia and Amritha trace the money from a 2009 hijacking in the Indian Ocean through to today's headlines, where presidents and prime ministers are throwing the word "pirate" at each other in the Strait of Hormuz. Sponsors: We...

Has crypto really earned its reputation as the payment method of choice for drugs, arms and everything else illicit — or is the headline image overblown? In this episode, Amritha and Sylwia sit down with Isabella to look at the reality of crypto-enabled financial crime. This is a slightly different episode for the season: rather than focusing on a single predicate offence, the conversation digs in...

Can AI actually do compliance tasks? Not in a demo, but in the messy reality of conflicts of interest, speak-up reports, third-party risk and investigation reviews? In this episode, Sylwia and Amritha sit down with Sabela, Director of Compliance & Ethics at EQS Group, to unpack what EQS learned from putting the leading AI models through their paces. Drawing on the EQS AI benchmark studies - 120 ta...

https://adata.pro/blog/ai-due-diligence-what-has-changed-and-what-works/?utm_source=DDD-podcast-notes&utm_id=When+AI+Meets+Financial+Crime+Intelligence+DDD AI in due diligence isn't a new conversation but the ground keeps shifting underneath it, almost daily! In this episode, Sylwia and Amritha return to one of the defining questions of the industry: not whether to use AI, but how to use it respon...

Modern slavery is one of the most under-enforced areas of corporate compliance and the legal landscape is moving fast. In this episode, Sylwia and Amritha are joined by two leading practitioners to unpack what companies are actually required to do, where the frameworks fall short, and why a clean audit is no longer proof of a clean supply chain. S2E8 brings in two specialist guests for a deep dive...

In this episode, Sylwia and Amritha examine trafficking in human beings as a predicate offence — what it actually is, how its financial footprints appear in banking and payments data, and why it concerns everyone from transaction monitoring analysts to supply chain compliance teams. You'll learn: why trafficking is often financially detectable before it is criminally provable — and why that makes...

In this episode, Sylwia and Amritha examine bribery and corruption as predicate offences — the crimes that generate dirty money long before a suspicious transaction alert fires or a sanctions designation lands. They explore why understanding the law is only the starting point, and why geopolitics, local practice, and cultural context are just as essential for anyone working in AML or corporate com...

In this episode, Sylwia and Amritha examine terrorist financing — how money moves to support terrorist organisations, why it differs from money laundering, and how ordinary companies can become caught in the middle. You’ll learn: why terrorist financing is about purpose, not just source of funds, how clean money can become criminal depending on where it goes why terrorist financing and money laund...

⚠️ Content Warning: This episode discusses child sexual abuse material (CSAM), online child sexual exploitation, trafficking, and related investigations. Some listeners may find the subject matter distressing. Please take care while listening. In one of the most difficult — and important — episodes we’ve produced, Amritha and Sylwia examine the financial systems, investigative methods, and complia...

In this episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha sit down with Becky Holmes, author of Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love With You, to unpack the reality behind romance fraud — one of the most emotionally manipulative and misunderstood financial crimes out there. What starts as funny (and often absurd) interactions with celebrity impersonators quickly reveals something much darker: a global,...

Illegal gold mining in the Amazon is not just an environmental disaster. It is also a financial crime story. In this episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha explore how environmental crime moves from remote mining sites into legitimate global markets. From the Elemetal and NTR Metals scandal to a high-profile UAE–DRC gold deal, they break down how illegally mined gold is mixed with l...

Counterfeit handbags, fake medicines, pirated content - intellectual property crime is everywhere, but it’s still widely misunderstood and underestimated. In this episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha kick off Season 2 by unpacking intellectual property (IP) crime — what it is, how it works, and why it matters for anyone in due diligence, investigations, or compliance. From billion...

In this season-finale episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha tackle one of the most underrated skills in investigations and compliance: how to write a clear, defensible, and genuinely useful due diligence and investigations report. Drawing on decades of reviewing (and rewriting!) thousands of EDD and intelligence reports, they break down what makes reporting actually effective — fro...

In this episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha go beyond basic sanctions lists and dive into the real investigative work behind detecting sanctions evasion and avoidance. Our guest, Svetlana Djurdjevic -a leading sanctions expert-joins us to break down the fast-moving world of sanctions investigations. We explore where red flags truly come from, how investigators piece together onbo...

A quick, clear primer on what sanctions are, how they work, and why they matter for financial crime and due diligence professionals. On this bonus episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha break down the main types of sanctions, who issues them, and the difference between targeted and narrative sanctions. We also touch on recent real-world examples and explain why investigators — not j...

Human rights abuses aren’t confined to distant places. They are intricately woven into the global supply chains we depend on every day. In this episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha break down what Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) truly entails, how it differs from traditional KYC or ABC checks, and why companies must shift their focus from stakeholders to rightsholders. They disc...

AI is everywhere in compliance platforms, in vendor pitches, in risk tools, and (apparently) in Boris Johnson’s heart. But what does it actually do for due diligence and investigations? In this episode of Due Diligence Download, Amritha and Sylwia break down the reality behind the hype, joined by special guest Maya. Together, they explore how AI is changing corporate investigations, where it genui...

What can you uncover with nothing more than a laptop, an internet connection, and a healthy dose of curiosity? In this episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha dive into the fascinating world of Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) with investigator and educator Alicja Pawłowska. From tracking fake baby food gangs and Russian doxxing sites to busting myths about what OSINT really is (hint...

Every risk professional dreams of clean data and open registries until they try to access them in a high-risk jurisdiction. In this episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha go behind the curtain of high-risk jurisdictions where the paper trail might look perfect, but the truth is buried under bureaucracy, politics, and silence. From so-called “digital” registries that aren’t accessibl...

Every investigation, from corruption cases to sanctions busting, eventually leads to one critical question: Who’s really behind it all? In this episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha explore the world of Ultimate Beneficial Ownership (UBO) - the people who truly control companies, assets, and money flows, no matter how many shell layers or offshore addresses are in between. It begin...

Hidden fortunes. Offshore trails. Unanswered questions. Every major investigation eventually comes down to one thing: who really owns what? In this episode, Sylwia Wołos and Amritha Edachery unpack the world of asset tracing and the meticulous craft of following money through shell companies, bank accounts, and digital trails to uncover what others try to hide. You’ll learn: What asset tracing act...

Meet the real-life “girl spy.” In this episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha step into the shadows with Katie Frodsham, CEO of National Security News, who’s spent nearly 20 years conducting both overt and covert investigations - from boardrooms to back alleys. Katie takes us inside the secret world of undercover work - guts, grit and a few gadgets! She shares jaw-dropping stories f...

What if everything on paper looked perfect but the truth on the ground told a different story? In this episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha dig into one of the most powerful and sometimes misunderstood tools in corporate investigations: the site visit. From government-funded “ghost” road projects to fake factory façades and tender-rigging schemes hiding in plain sight, they reveal...

More data doesn’t always mean better data. Or does it? In this episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha dig into one of the biggest blind spots in compliance and investigations: figuring out which sources you can actually trust. From Wirecard’s spectacular collapse to the hidden traps of relying only on structured data, we unpack the difference between numbers that look neat on paper...

Episode 1: The One on the complexity of names. What’s in a name? More than you might think. In the very first episode of Due Diligence Download, Sylwia and Amritha pull back the curtain on one of the biggest—and most overlooked—challenges in corporate investigations: names. From FBI indictments gone wrong, to the pitfalls of transliteration, to the cultural nuances of Arabic and Russian naming con...