Financial Crime Matters

In this episode of “Financial Crime Matters,” Kieran talks live from the ACAMS Assembly Canada with Inspector Nick Souccar, who is Officer in Charge of Federal Policing Criminal Operations, Serious and Organized Crime, and the Canadian Integrated Response to Organized Crime for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Nick and Kieran discuss law enforcement’s efforts to secure Canada’s borders against the importation of ‘traditional’ plant-based drugs like cocaine and the flood of precursor chemicals for producing fentanyl in makeshift labs throughout the country. With 21 fentanyl-related deaths in Canada per day, efforts to fight drug trafficking and manufacturing throughout has required a massive effort, recently energized by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office of Canada’s Fentanyl Czar Kevin Brosseau and the creation of the Joint Operational Intelligence Cell. In combating dangerous illicit drugs, Nick details some of the ways drug traffickers launder money and the kinds of invaluable information the financial community can provide to law enforcement. With criminal organizations regularly creating new dangerous synthetic drugs, many of them not opioids whose overdoses can be countered by Naloxone, Nick points out the need for information sharing via public and private partnerships.

In this episode of "Financial Crime Matters," Kieran talks live from The ACAMS Assembly Las Vegas with Ned Conway, Executive Secretary at the Wolfsberg Group, an association of 12 of the world's largest banks that focuses on managing financial crime and money laundering risks. Ned discusses Wolfsberg's recommendations for banking stablecoin producers, pointing to the group's recent guidance "Provision of Banking Services to Fiat-backed Stablecoin Issuers." The guidance adapts some of Wolfberg's seminal recommendations for correspondent banking relationships and can be "flipped" to serve banks considering dealing in stablecoin in various capacities. Commenting on remarks earlier in the day by Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence John Hurley, Ned welcomeds promises of simplified suspicious activity reporting, greater information sharing by the public and private sectors, and regulatory oversight primarily focused on getting law enforcement what it needs to effectively fight crime.

In this episode of "Financial Crime Matters," Kieran talks with Eddie Fishman, author of “Chokepoints: How the Global Economy Became a Weapon of War," about the rapid growth in the use of financial sanctions in the 21st Century, with each US president from George W. Bush on imposing sanctions at twice the rate of his predecessor. Drawing on history and his own experience from stints at the US State Department, Pentagon and Treasury, Eddie cites examples of successful and unsuccessful sanctions programs, arguing that the former generally seek to force specific behavioral changes from a targeted government, while the latter are often too ambitious. Sanctions, for example, that seek regime change leave government leaders with little incentive to negotiate. Presidents Bush’s and Obama’s actions against Iran that resulted in the Islamic state suspending efforts to create material for nuclear weapons production under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) exemplify the successful use of sanctions, Eddie says, adding that a weakness in US sanctions policy is the potential for political change. The Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018. Contrary to some characterizations, particularly those from Russian officials, Eddie also argues that sanctions against the Putin regime have stunted Russia’s economy and, consequently, its ability to wage war.

In this episode of "Financial Crime Matters," Kieran talks with AUSTRAC CEO Brendan Thomas about his agency's efforts to implement a vast extension of Australia's anti-money laundering regime to about 80,000 new entities under legislation commonly referred to as T2. In service to those efforts, Brendan details AUSTRAC's outreach to law firms, accountants, real estate agencies and other designated non-financial businesses and persons who will be required to create an anti-money laundering (AML) risk analysis, appoint an AML officer and be ready to file suspicious matters reports by July 2026. Key to Australia's need to come into compliance with the Financial Action Task Force's global standards, the extension of AML regulation is also central to the country's plan to actually stem the flood of illicit funds from transnational crime organizations into Australia's banking, gaming, real estate, precious metals and other sectors, Brendan says. As part of its commitment to effectuate more fund seizures and prosecutions, Brendan discusses how the AUSTRAC initiative will also utilize public-private information sharing, embodied by the country's Fintel Alliance, increased staffing, and AI and other technological tools to weaponize what will ultimately be 100,000 anti-financial crime reporting entities under T2.

In this episode of "Financial Crime Matters," Kieran talks with Renata Furst Galvão about identity theft, focusing on the theft of children’s identities for financial exploitation. Renata recounts the theft of her own identity as a six-year-old child and the tremendous burden it placed on her until her financial records were cleared of debt in her late twenties. Renata draws on her experience as a victim as detailed in the YouTube documentary short “One in Fifty” and the expertise she subsequently achieved in her professional life as partner manager for risk intelligence at the LSEG Group. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU-lC6_801E

In this episode of "Financial Crime Matters" Kieran talks with John Tobon, former assistant director for the Department of Homeland Security Investigations' Countering Transnational Crime and Terrorism Division, to set the stage for ACAMS' upcoming Assembly Latin America in Cancun, July 21- 22, 2025. In this fast-moving conversation, John and Kieran discuss Chinese underground money laundering, migration and money laundering, and the state of public private partnerships in Latin America. https://www.acams.org/en/events/the-assembly/the-assembly-latam

In this episode of “Financial Crime Matters,” Kieran talks with Sara Brimbeuf, head of the illicit financial flows program at Transparency International France. Sara and Kieran discuss TI France's efforts to fight bribery and corruption in conjunction with TI chapters around the globe and the non-governmental agency's current efforts to bring to justice French intermediaries accused of aiding global leaders in laundering the proceeds of corruption. Sara also describes the uses and limits of TI's well-known "Corruption Perception Index," and its new benchmark, the Opacity in Real Estate Ownership (OREO) Index, which tracks 24 jurisdictions' requirements for disclosure of real estate ownership, as well as TI France's fight for transparency in corporate ownership in general in France.

In this episode of “Financial Crime Matters,” Kieran talks with Andy Greenberg, senior writer at WIRED and author of the blockchain forensic thriller “Tracers In The Dark.” Halfway into their conversation, they are joined by Tigran Gambaryan, head of financial crime compliance at Binance and a former IRS-CI investigator. Andy, Tigran and Kieran discuss Tigran’s detention by Nigerian authorities for 8 months as part of the government's effort to force Binance to pay billions in penalties, which was the subject of an in-depth WIRED article by Andy. They also talk about Tigran’s role as a blockchain forensics pioneer documented by Andy in “Tracers In The Dark,” and what each sees as the opportunities and challenges associated with the rise of digital assets.

In this episode of “Financial Crime Matters,” Kieran talks with Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler, Senior Director of the Counter-Extremism Project about the current violent threats posed by Islamic radicals, and right-wing and left-wing extremist groups. Drawing on his expertise as Senior Director of the Counter Extremism Project and years of diplomatic service, Hans names the extremist organizations that currently threaten to unleash global violence. While detailing some of the catalysts for the militancy of these organizations, including ongoing conflict in the Middle East and Africa, and political polarization in the United States and Europe, Hans also discusses what financial institutions and government can do individually and in concert to cut off funding to terror groups