Chris Batt

Chris Batt joined RUSI as a Senior Associate Fellow, following a twelve-year career with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which in turn followed a long career as a criminal investigator in the British police.

During his police service, Chris was involved in a wide range of criminal investigations including violent crime, drug trafficking, corruption, human trafficking and fraud before moving into intelligence gathering, covert operations and finally, money laundering and criminal asset forfeiture. Many of these investigations involved an international dimension and the need to work overseas. Chris spent his last four years’ service with the UK Asset Recovery Agency, now the National Crime Agency, where he was responsible for main streaming financial investigation, money laundering and asset recovery across UK law enforcement.

At the United Nations, Chris was the Anti-Money Laundering & Counter Financing of Terrorism Mentor based in Vietnam and Laos. With primary responsibility for the Mekong regional countries of Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, Chris also saw secondments to the wider Asia Pacific region, Africa and Central Asia. In the main, his responsibilities included the provision of technical assistance at a strategic, policy and legal drafting level as well as delivering a wide range of law enforcement, prosecutorial, FIU and judicial training in addition to operational mentoring. He supported jurisdictions at the pre and post FATF mutual evaluation stage, particularly those countries entering the International Cooperation Review Group mechanism.

Chris was also heavily involved in initiatives to combat the illegal trade in wildlife in the Mekong Region as well as supporting anti-corruption efforts at both a policy and operational level. Chris has a post-graduate degree diploma in Fraud Management and in 2012, together with Professor Alan Doig, co-authored The Counter Fraud Practitioner’s Handbook published by Gower.