Future of Financial Crimes Speaker Series: The financial action task force recommendation on cash couriers

We invite you to join us for the next program from the Future of Financial Crime speaker series, “The Financial Action Task Force Recommendation on Cash Couriers.” Dr. Kumar’s presentation will focus on the recently revised Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards on Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT. Specifically, he will examine Recommendation 32, which provides the standards for member countries to implement, including:

1. Measures in place to detect the physical cross-border transportation of cash and negotiable instruments
2. Ensuring that competent officials have the appropriate legal authority to enforce the measures
3. Ensuring that effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions are available to deal with violators, including the ability to seize and forfeit the funds

As terrorists, criminal organizations and money launderers continue to avoid banking channels and formal value transfer systems, to prevent leaving a paper trail that could identify and detect their illegal activity. Cash couriers and bulk cash smuggling are therefore preferred methods to move and transfer criminal proceeds and terrorist funding.

Dr. Kumar will discuss the current state of implementation of R32 within FATF member nations, specifically in South Asia and the challenges and obstacles facing border agencies and law enforcement authorities. Dr. Kumar will also discuss the terrorist groups that tend to rely on cash couriers and bulk cash smuggling,  the legislative measures required for effective implementation, and provide his insight into which countries are succeeding and failing at implementing R32.

Dr. Amit Kumar is CNP’s Fellow for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.  His key areas of expertise include the financing, organization, and evolution of transnational terrorist and criminal networks, both global and South Asian, and development and implementation of international, multilateral, regional, bilateral, and national regulatory Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) and counterterrorism compliance measures against such networks through AML/CFT capacity building, and through appropriate legal, policy, and organizational responses; international inspection and oversight; organizational theory; public-private partnerships in critical infrastructure protection; and homeland security.

Dr. Kumar has a number of years of experience working with the Al-Qaida Taliban Sanctions regime at the United Nations. In this capacity, he offered substantive advice to the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Regimes at the United Nations on matters related to the implementation of Assets Freeze Sanctions measures against the Al-Qaida and Taliban, as well as issues relating to countering the financing of terrorism. He participated in the activities of the United Nations Counter Implementation Task Force's Working Group on Tackling the Financing of Terrorism.

Dr. Kumar is Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Public Management at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice where he introduced and teaches the 800 level Graduate Course in Terrorist Financing and Adjunct Senior Fellow at George Mason University's Center for Infrastructure Protection and Homeland Security, where he contributes articles related to Terrorist Financing and Critical Infrastructure Protection to the Center's Critical Infrastructure Protection Report.