“It’s about time we took this seriously” – RUSI financial crime expert on tackling dirty money

Photo: Thomas McEnchroe, Radio Prague International

What is the European Union and the wider Western world doing to tackle financial crime? And can financial tools be used to curb hostile regimes such as the one in Russia? These are some of the questions that are being explored by the Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies (CFCS), a part of Britain’s leading security think tank – the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). I caught up with the founder and director of CFCS, Tom Keatinge, when he was in Prague attending an event organised by the Prague Security Studies Institute last week. He warned that dirty money is undermining European democracy and I asked him how.

“First of all, it should be said that it’s not an original idea because it was a point that was emphasised by the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her State of the Union address in September.

“In any case, I think that for many years in Europe, when we thought about ‘dirty money’ we thought about criminal money coming from non-state actors, organised crime groups and and terrorists.

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Author: Thomas McEnchroe