Bringing international expertise to Canberra
ANZSOC Corporate Crime Group members, Associate Professor Anton Moiseienko (ANU Law School) and Dr Jamie Ferrill (Australian Graduate School of Policing, Charles Sturt University) were delighted to host a group of leading international sanctions and anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) experts between 29-31 July, for an array of formal and informal discussions on the topic of sanctions as a tool of economic statecraft.
The week’s program included a workshop on the current challenges and opportunities for Australia, Canada, the EU, the UK and other like-minded Western democracies to effectively deploy and enforce economic sanctions. Among the workshop attendees were senior representatives from multiple Australian government departments, foreign embassies and private-sector institutions, including banks and consultancies.
The workshop was run as a part of the ongoing Canberra Financial Crime seminar series, which is co-convened by Dr Moiseienko and Dr Ferrill. Dr Ferrill said: “The seminar series brings practitioners and academics together with the goal of building an economic security community, where operational insight shapes research, and current research reaches the practitioners applying it. These are the conversations that work to shape Australia’s economic security.”
This broad representation enabled a rich discussion of the contemporary sanctions landscape. Remarking on the value of bringing together perspectives of practitioners, policymakers, and academics, one of the participants, Kylie Oliver, Senior Manager Enterprise Sanctions Compliance at ANZ Bank, said: “These engagements highlighted the value of strong public-private partnerships, where government, industry, and academia come together to translate research, scholarship, and real-world operational experience into practical policy outcomes. They also demonstrated how collaboration across these sectors can help shape policy development, strengthen collective capability, and support more effective and resilient outcomes.”
This initiative was held in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), Germany. “It was terrific to have the opportunity to bring leading international and domestic experts for a packed program of sanctions discussions. Canberra is a particularly appropriate place to host them as Australia is one of the several emerging sanctions powers that needs to consider how it best uses its economic statecraft capabilities”, Associate Professor Moiseienko said.
The workshop was followed by a public lecture on the future of international economic statecraft. The keynote address was delivered by Professor Thomas Biersteker (Graduate Institute, Geneva), with panel contributions from Professor Christian Leuprecht (Queen’s University/Royal Military College of Canada), Professor Clara Portela (University of Valencia, Spain), Tom Keatinge (founding Director, Centre for Finance and Security, Royal United Services Institute, UK), and Claudine Lamond (Grant Thornton, Australia). “It was a great end to the week, and the level of attendance and engagement on a Friday night was testimony to the interest that it generated,” remarked Dr Moiseienko, chair of the panel discussion.
Building research and collaboration on financial crime
This week of discussions took place in connection with an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, carried out by Dr Moiseienko, Dr Ferrill and a group of colleagues from Australian universities and overseas, entitled Enforcing Financial Sanctions: Strengthening Australia’s Ability to Freeze Sanctioned Assets, which has received $530,000 in funding.
Bringing together a team of interdisciplinary experts from across Australia, the UK, and Canada, this socio-legal study aims to address the significant knowledge gap that exists with respect to the mechanisms and practical challenges involved in enforcing sanctions.
This success builds on a series of recent events held as part of the Canberra Financial Crime Seminars series, including the ANZSOC-sponsored launch of Dr Moiseienko’s monograph Doing Business with Criminals (Cambridge University Press, 2025) last year.
Further Canberra Financial Crime Seminars will cover other salient financial crime and illicit trade issues, including those explored in the ongoing Australian Institute of Criminology-funded project entitled Criminal Adaptation Across Trade-Based Crimes, which studies the intersection of trade-based money laundering and tobacco trade.
