Making Information Flow: Instruments and Innovations for Enhancing Financial Intelligence
The technical, bureaucratic and legal structures for information sharing between and within the public and private sectors could be made more effective and efficient
Improved sharing of financial intelligence (FININT) is necessary to protect the international community from terrorism, human trafficking, grand corruption, tax evasion and other illicit activity.
Terrorists, organised criminals and the corrupt operate on a global scale and move funds across borders rapidly. With access to specific and current information about illicit financial activity, law enforcement agencies, regulators and financial institutions can detect and act against these threats. Yet public and private sector stakeholders are often unable to share FININT in a sufficiently timely manner to disrupt illicit networks.
Governments, international institutions and the private sector are developing important new instruments to facilitate more frequent and rapid FININT sharing. These efforts include establishing collaborative public–private FININT partnerships, increasing the frequency of official exchanges between governments and investing in new technological platforms. However, further innovations are necessary to allow the public and private sectors to achieve the level of information sharing required to counter evolving security threats successfully.
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About the Author:
David Carlisle is an independent consultant specialising in devising strategies for combating financial crime. He has worked in London since 2012. From 2007 to 2011, David held various roles in the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, where he worked on US policy related to anti-money laundering, countering terrorist financing and economic sanctions regimes. David holds a Masters in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.