This event has now finished.
  • Date and time: Monday 6 March 2023, 4pm to 5.30pm
  • Location: In-person and online
    Room CL/A/023X, Church Lane Building, Campus West, University of York (Map)
  • Audience: Open to alumni, staff, students, the public
  • Admission: Free admission, booking not required

Event details

Masterclass

The global war on dirty money engages hundreds of thousands of full-time professionals across the financial sector, international institutions, national governments and the criminal justice sector. It costs well over $200 billion per year and rising. Yet its victories seem few and far between, with no measurable overall progress.

Slavery, drug trafficking and fraud are just a few of over 20 different crime types targeted by the war on dirty money. These activities threaten the planet, its people and wildlife through illegal environmental destruction. Making crime not pay seems an obvious, direct and measurable way to reverse planetary destruction, reduce human misery, and meet the challenge head-on. Recovered billions could finance a virtuous circle that reduces crime and directly supports education, public health and sanitation. 

The war is not going well. The authors trace the war back to a G7 conference in 1989, when a ‘Financial Action Task Force’ (FATF) was launched. Over the last 30 years a vast global infrastructure has been created to try and prevent ‘dirty money’ entering a financial system that is, in fact, already awash with it.

The authors suggest that after a promising start, the project was derailed and stayed there. This book challenges the global approach, arguing that complacency, self-interest and misunderstanding have now created longstanding absurdities.

Join the talk on Zoom

Meeting ID: 993 0852 7371
Passcode: 938767

This event will be moderated by Dr Slobodan Tomic, Lecturer in Public Management at the School for Business and Society, and is co-organised by the Masterclass series at SBS and the recently founded interdepartmental RegNet network (of UoY) which gathers scholars interested in and working in the field of regulatory governance. 

About the speaker

Tristram Hicks is an international criminal justice advisor on the operational effectiveness of anti-money laundering regimes. He is a former New Scotland Yard detective superintendent.

'The War on Dirty Money' is written by Tristram Hicks and Nicholas Gilmour.