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In this episode of “Financial Crime Matters” Kieran talks with Erin West, the former Santa Clara County prosecutor who founded “Operation Shamrock,” a not-for-profit dedicated to fighting the explosion in cross border online scams and related-crimes that often rely on forced labor. Erin and Kieran discuss her virtual and on the ground pursuit of transnational perpetrators of fraud, including exposing romance scam compounds in Cambodia and Myanmar, hunting Yahoo Boy sextortionist “Big Dollar” in a village outside of Nigeria, and, just prior to this interview, touring Oklahoma to uncover marijuana farms that utilize enslaved labor.

In this episode of “Financial Crime Matters with Kieran Beer,” Kieran talks with Sal Melki, Deputy Director for Illicit Finance and Public Private Partnerships at Britain’s National Economic Crime Centre and the National Crime Agency. Speaking with Kieran at the ACAMS Assembly in Europe this spring, Sal details some of the anti-crime efforts of the NCA, including “Operation Destabilise,” which brought down a more than billion-dollar money laundering operation that converted dirty money for transnational criminals into more fungible cryptocurrency.

In this episode of "Financial Crime Matters," Kieran asks former senior banking regulators Lisa Arquette, Donna Murphy and Suzanne Williams to draw on their cumulative decades of insight related to US anti-financial crime regulation. Recently retired, Lisa, Donna and Suzanne discuss their roles in defining Bank Secrecy Act, or BSA, requirements over the past twenty years at the FDIC, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Federal Reserve Board, respectively. Recalling that anti-money laundering oversight was once "given to the most junior [bank] examiner" and primarily involved asking tellers "what they did with cash," Lisa, Donna and Suzanne detail how the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Congressional hearings and other events brought about the huge expansion of BSA responsibilities for financial institutions. In discussing their careers, Lisa, Donna and Suzanne also touch on how inter-banking agency conflicts were dealt with and what they wished their agencies might have accomplished but did not. Finally, they conclude by discussing the current shift in regulatory priorities manifest by the changing role of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, and the push to grant banking charters to digital asset companies and other fintechs.

In this episode of "Financial Crime Matters," Kieran talks with Megs Shah, the CEO and founder of The Parasol Cooperative, a not-for-profit that has created an AI tool to reach and serve the victims of domestic violence, child sex abuse, and labor trafficking. Drawing on her successful career in AI working with large corporations and her experience as a survivor of child sexual abuse, Megs discusses how the cooperative has created technology that allows victims of violence to safely seek emotional support and ultimately resources that can help free them.

In this episode of “Financial Crime Matters,” Kieran talks with Joseph Salama, chief compliance officer at Coinbase, about mitigating financial crime risk associated with digital assets. Joe discusses current regulatory frameworks for crypto currencies, touching on the Stablecoin Act, Europe's Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) and some current proposals for oversight, arguing that the industry needs clear guardrails, not regulation by enforcement action. Proper regulation, he says, will produce enough friction to help identify and interdict illicit transactions, give crypto users confidence in digital markets, and minimize roadblocks to legitimate crypto asset transactions. With cryptocurrency an increasingly important component in money laundering schemes, Joe envisions holistic oversight of transactions that breaks down walls between traditional financial institutions and digital asset service providers, while expressing optimism a convergence of both is already underway and will only grow.

In this episode of “Financial Crime Matters,” Kieran talks with Jason Blazakis about his book, "Terror Disrupted: Countering the Financing of Terrorism." A professor at the Middlebury Institute and a former counterterrorism finance office director at the US State Department, Jason concludes that the current global situation and the "combination of losing [anti-terrorism] resources with the 'deprioritization' of terror as a core security threat has put us at risk in a way we haven't seen since 9-11." While describing red flags for financial institutions to identify terrorists and terror funds, Jason also names the actors he sees as most dangerous for America and argues for a greater government commitment to countering terror threats, not least from homegrown and self-radicalizing individuals who have been responsible for the accelerating number of terror attacks in America over the past thirty years.

In this episode of “Financial Crime Matters,” Kieran talks with Oliver Bullough about his latest book, “Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won.” In their discussion, Oliver details how a well-intentioned anti-money laundering effort launched in the United States in 1970 snowballed to become today’s global compliance industry, which spends $200 billion annually even as money laundering and other financial crimes spike. Oliver faults several stakeholders in the current AML status quo, not least global governments’ deputization of the private sector in lieu of adequately funding and empowering law enforcement and the courts to police the global economy. The failure of AML requires a total ‘rethink’ of the war on illicit finance, according to the author of two fundamental books on money laundering, "Moneyland" and "Butler to the World.”

In this episode of “Financial Crime Matters,” Kieran talks with former South African jurist Richard Goldstone about his current efforts as a board member at Integrity Initiatives International, to help create the International Anti-Corruption Court (IACC). Richard, who served on South Africa’s Constitutional Court and then led several international justice initiatives, discusses the trillion-dollar cost of corruption to many nations’ infrastructure, public health and education, and how it empowers authoritarian oligarchs. Detailing the current draft charter for the Court, Richard makes a compelling case that the IACC could seize stolen assets and hold accountable kleptocrats who currently escape the purview of the International Criminal Court, which focuses on genocide, war crimes and other acts of aggression.

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.