By ELIZABETH HEARST, Digital Editor
AML Intelligence today announced that global FinCrime expert Ilze Znotina is joining the site as a regular columnist.
Ilze – one of the best known names in global Anti-Financial Crime – joins our award-winning team this week, writing on the topical issues of the day for our members.
She was until recently Head of the Government of Latvia’s FIU and is credited with devising a strategy which kept the country off FATF’s ‘grey list’ to become one of the EU’s stand out leaders in fighting financial crime.
AMLi publisher Stephen Rae said: “We are delighted that Ilze is joining the team as a columnist. She is one of the leading lights in global anti-financial crime, with experience on the frontline of making a real and tangible difference in Latvia and now on the global stage. The feedback from AMLi members has been very positive with everyone saying they really look forward to reading her regular columns.”
In her first column – available today to AML Intelligence members – Ilze writes candidly on battling Russian dirty money across the EU – and how the bloc can starting winning the fight.
“It is obvious however that financial crime fighters are lagging far behind in achieving meaningful results in targeting of Russian criminal assets and activities because the old approach just does not allow us to effectively fight the sophisticated methods used by Russia-related criminal networks,” she writes.
“Trade-based money laundering is the most common method” used by Russia. “There are hundreds of thousands of agreements on trading with electronic devices, machine parts, clothing, textiles, building materials and food. Trade in strategic commodities — particularly fuel and energy resources — is a particularly lucrative target for criminal groups,” she says.
“AML is no longer just a matter of financial integrity. It is a matter of the integrity of European security as a whole. A gap in a single jurisdiction opens all of Europe up to not just crime, but money that is increasingly used to support warfare operations by Russia.
“Failing to upgrade the international community’s capability and cohesion to wage an effective response using sanctions, for too long relying largely on financial institutions individually to do the heavy lifting, with ever more parties sanctioned and complex sanctions becoming the norm.
“It’s time to reimagine how to deploy a collective shield to prevent sanctioned parties accessing and using the international financial system rather than the patchwork approach of individual financial institutions that has been the norm for the last 20 years,” writes our new columnist.
Tomorrow read her column on how the EU, US and other countries can devise a new approach to begin changing the fight against financial crime – available to read for AML Intelligence members.
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