23 Nov 2022, 00:00 CET

PSSI in collaboration with Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and its Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies (CFCS) organized a lecture titled National Security Aspects of Illicit Finance for PSSI´s scholars and alumni. Tom Keatinge, the director of CFCS talked about the dangers that illicit financial flows pose for democracies.

His lecture focused on the financial dimension of state threats, the current understanding of illicit finance, the methods by which adversaries seek to undermine Western democracies and exploit our financial systems via the use of ‘active financial measures’. Additionally he addressed sanctions implemented against the Russian Federation for the attack on Ukraine, their components, effectiveness and possible evolution of this sanctions regime.

Mr. Keatinge´s research focuses on matters at the intersection of finance and security. He is also an adviser on illicit finance to the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee ongoing enquiry. He has a Master’s in Intelligence and International Security from King’s College London, where he studied the effectiveness of the global counterterror finance regime. Prior to joining RUSI in 2014, he was an investment banker for 20 years at J.P. Morgan.

The lecture was part of the European Sanctions And Illicit Finance Monitoring And Analysis Network (Euro SIFMANet) project.