Refinitiv’s collaboration with various organizations helps expand our knowledge base and add valuable insights into the most effective ways to fight organized criminal networks involved in green and financial crime. Phil Cotter, Managing Director of the Risk business at Refinitiv, explains.
- By working with a wide range of organizations, we gain valuable insight and knowledge to help assist our clients in uncovering financial crime links.
- The information we receive from one organization relates specifically to individuals and entities involved in or with connections to wildlife trafficking and green crime.
- Another collaboration is helping to expose those who profit from armed conflict and atrocities and preventing the proceeds from entering the financial system.
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The pervasive nature of both financial crime (including fraud, money laundering, theft, bribery and corruption, cybercrime, and slavery/human trafficking) and green crime (including wildlife trafficking and environmental crime) continues to plague individuals, companies, and societies across the globe.
Refinitiv research has found that organizations lose approximately 3.5 percent of their global turnover to financial crime every year.
Meanwhile, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates the value of illegal wildlife trafficking to be in the region of US$15-23bn per annum, making it one of world’s largest sources of illicit money flows into the world’s financial systems.
Financial crime and green crime are often closely linked and Refinitiv is committed to helping to expose and eradicate both across corporate networks and global supply chains.
Watch: Green Crime: The Hidden Threat — A Refinitiv Data Moment
Success in uncovering criminal networks in turn relies on access to complete and reliable data.
The power of data in fighting financial crime
Accurate, trusted data is the foundation of any successful risk mitigation program.
Refinitiv offers unsurpassed depth and breadth of data that can be leveraged to screen third parties and analyze network connections.
We have been providing our quality World-Check Risk Intelligence data to financial institutions and companies to assist in their regulatory and legislative compliance obligations for over two decades, helping to empower them to make better risk-related decisions and identify potential criminal activity.
Tracking wildlife trafficking money trails
Our 2020 partnership with United for Wildlife (UfW) creates a powerful combination of wildlife and environmental crime data and expertise from two influential organizations.
UfW, headed by The Duke of Cambridge and The Royal Foundation, is working to promote collaboration between the public and private sectors, eradicate illegal wildlife trade, and protect endangered species.
As a result of the partnership, information will be shared with Refinitiv with the aim of augmenting our trusted World-Check Risk Intelligence data with information relating specifically to individuals and entities involved in or with connections to wildlife trafficking and green crime.
Moreover, we will also be collaborating with UfW on training sessions, events, and campaigns focused on wildlife trafficking.
Exposing armed conflict financing and profiteering in Africa
The Sentry is an investigative and policy team that follows the dirty money connected to African war criminals and transnational war profiteers and which seeks to prevent those benefiting from violence from abusing the international financial system.
The Sentry uses open-source data collection, field research, and state-of-the-art network data analysis technology. It works in partnership with local and international civil society organizations, journalists, and governments to track and analyze how armed conflict and atrocities are financed, sustained, and monetized
This new partnership sees The Sentry supplying World-Check with open source data to help enhance its dataset relating to African war criminals abusing international financial systems.
Relevant information will be included in the World-Check database in accordance with our stringent guidelines and robust inclusion criteria.
We continue to find ways through these such partnerships to assist our clients in uncovering criminal links to money-laundering, terrorist financing and other illicit activities.
In the future, Refinitiv and The Sentry will also collaborate on joint projects, including events and webinars.
Fighting financial crime together
We believe that working together with like-minded organizations in both the public and private sectors helps us gain valuable insights into sophisticated criminal activity and their networks so that we in turn can continue to help organizations uncover hidden risk and fight financial and green crime efficiently and effectively.
