Financial Crime Matters

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 e...

‘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 t...

'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...

'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....

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...

‘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 mi...

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 dev...

'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 a...

‘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 histor...

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 acti...

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...

At 20, Timea Nagy was forced into sex slavery. But her story didn't end there. Her memoir 'Out of the Shadows' describes a vulnerable girl, tricked and manipulated by traffickers, who - once she escapes - becomes a key player in putting away the bad guys. In this episode, Kieran asks how financial institutions can help. And Timea explains that their evidence might soon prevent victims from sufferi...

Jeffrey Robinson introduced stories of money laundering to the masses with his 1995 global best seller 'The Laundrymen'. Poised to release a completely revised edition 'The New Laundrymen' next year, Jeffrey gives Kieran a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what's included. Always opinionated and deeply passionate about the characters and stories he uncovers, Robinson, the author of 30 books, has been l...

FATF spoke...and Canada listened. Jacqueline Shinfield of Blake, Cassels & Graydon walks Kieran Beer through the sweeping changes that Canada is making to its AML and Anti-Financial Crime legislative landscape. From regulating virtual currencies, changes to STR regimes, and dramatic shifts in Electronic Funds Transfer reporting frameworks - this is a must-hear briefing for all compliance professio...

'We're now treating the Financiers just as seriously as the Terrorists themselves...that's a Gamechanger'. In this expansive chat about the financing of global terrorism, Celina Realuyo tells Kieran Beer about the defeat of ISIS, the rise and reach of Hezbollah and how criminals are using every trick in the financial crime book to keep money flowing to those intent on creating Terror. As a former...

"Data Protection is not an obstacle to fight money-laundering" : Alexandra Jour-Schroeder of the European Commission In this episode, Kieran Beer hosts a fast-paced discussion with Alexandra Jour-Schroeder about the European Union's efforts to fight money laundering and the financing of terror. Their chat covers a diverse range of topics, from 5AMLD to GDPR, the effort to harmonise definitions acr...

Elder financial abuse is as devastating as physical abuse, and it's a problem on the rise. In this episode, Elizabeth Loewy and Kieran Beer explore both simple and high-tech ways to pick up on the signs that vulnerable adults might be being defrauded. With an estimated 70-80% of all US assets now held by seniors (the Baby Boomers are aging!), financial institutions have to be prepared to spot and...

How does North Korea finance their weapons program? And have sanctions been effective in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons? In this episode, Tom Keatinge from defence think tank RUSI talks to Kieran Beer about weapons of mass destruction, and gives his top tips for compliance professionals interested in upskilling in the increasingly complex area of counter-proliferation. Read more on...

Financial institutions have the power to disrupt the $150 billion business of modern slavery. In this episode, Angel Swift talks to Kieran Beer about the shocking global scale of human trafficking and the new digital platform that's been launched to help fight it: Stand Together Against Trafficking (STAT). If you work for a financial institution, in law enforcement, or at a non-profit or advocacy...

John Smith spent 11 years at OFAC, including three years as it's Director, and served under 4 Presidents. He is a global authority on Sanctions, and in this interview with Kieran Beer he sets out the past, present and future of the Sanctions world as we know it. Discover why OFAC was created, what role Congress plays (and should play!) in setting Sanctions, and how the Clinton, Bush, Obama and Tru...

Kieran Beer interviews two-time Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist Jake Bernstein about his new book "Secrecy World". Jake was a senior journalist on the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) team that broke the Panama Papers in 2017. His new book "Secrecy World", based on the story of Mossack Fonseca and the 2017 scandal, is about to be made into a major motion...

In the first episode of his new podcast series, Kieran Beer sits down with author and Wall Street Journal reporter Bradley Hope to examine the story behind the story of the 1MDB scandal. Bradley and fellow WSJ reporter Thomas Wright co-authored "Billion Dollar Whale", the story of Malaysian national Jho Low, and how he managed to steal billions from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Devel...