What do global anti–money laundering and counter-terrorist financing rules actually achieve, and at what cost?
These questions sat at the heart of a recent book launch for Doing business with criminals: Between exclusion and surveillance (Cambridge University Press), and panel discussion that brought together academics, practitioners, policymakers, and students from across the corporate and financial crime landscape. Drawing on multidisciplinary expertise, the event created space for an informed and sometimes contested conversation about a regulatory regime that is both extraordinarily powerful and frequently misunderstood.
Following the event, we had a chat with the book’s author, Associate Professor Anton Moiseienko to reflect on the discussion, the value of cross-sector engagement, and how debates around exclusion, surveillance, and effectiveness are shaping future research and policy conversations in financial crime.
Congratulations on your book launch, what were you hoping participants, particularly those from different professional backgrounds, would take away from the discussion?
The global anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regime is uniquely far-reaching and influential, but also problematic and widely misunderstood. With this event, we were hoping to stimulate an informed conversation about the trade-offs involved. To do this, we brought together a multidisciplinary panel combining academic and practical expertise, including not only the book’s author (A/Prof Anton Moiseienko), but also leading experts in trade crime (Dr Jamie Ferrill), proceeds of crime law (Prof Colin King) and former AUSTRAC General Counsel (Russell Wilson).
The event attracted a diverse mix of academics, practitioners, and students, why is this cross-sector engagement especially important in the corporate and financial crime space?
One of the unique features of the global financial crime rules is their versatility. They are meant to help governments combat all manners of organised crime activities, from drug trafficking to corruption to cybercrime — as well as terrorist financing and proliferation financing. So, it is important to bring together criminal justice practitioners from across different walks of life. It is also essential to ensure that academia, law enforcement authorities, government agencies and private-sector experts all talk to each other about the issues involved — which is what Canberra Economic Crime Seminars, of which this event formed one instalment, aim to achieve.
The book sits at the intersection of exclusion and surveillance, how did these ideas resonate in the panel discussion?
Questions of effectiveness, and value for money, loom large in any serious discussion of financial crime controls. The book draws on the history of the regime to shed light on the objectives that the regime pursues. The tension between exclusion and surveillance is one way to frame those objectives and start thinking about the policy dilemmas that even the best-thought-out financial crime rules present. The discussion at the book launch drew on those themes and, perhaps predictably, led to some constructive disagreement among speakers!
How do you see the debates raised in the book shaping future research or policy discussions around financial crime?
One of the main themes of the book is the question of whether the global financial crime regime could look any different. Which are its necessary features, and which are the policy settings that can be adjusted — and at what cost, financially and otherwise? This approach engages with existing critical studies but also moves towards identifying potential solutions, thereby helping set an agenda for future research and policy work.
The panel included three ANZSOC Members representing the Corporate Crime thematic group.
Anton Moiseienko is an Associate Professor of Law at the Australian National University. His main areas of expertise are financial crime, including money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing, and the legal and policy aspects of economic sanctions. He is the author of Doing Business with Criminals, a wide-ranging account of the objectives and history of financial crime rules published by Cambridge University Press in 2025, and Corruption and Targeted Sanctions, a monograph on the legal and policy implications of ‘Magnitsky’ sanctions published by Brill in 2019. He has also co-edited four books on transnational crime, including the 35-chapter-long Research Handbook on Transnational Crime.
Colin King is a Professor at Sydney Law School. Originally from Limerick, Ireland – where he completed his LLB and PhD – Colin then moved to the UK for 14 years before arriving in Sydney in 2023. His research focuses on financial crime, particularly money laundering; proceeds of crime; and deferred prosecution agreements. Colin’s publications include: Civil Recovery of Criminal Property (King & Hendry, OUP 2023); Negotiated Justice: The Legitimacy of Civil Recovery and Deferred Prosecution Agreements (King & Lord, Palgrave 2018); and The Handbook of Criminal and Terrorism Financing Law (King, Walker & Gurulé eds, Palgrave, 2018).
Dr Jamie Ferrill
is a senior lecturer in Financial Crime Studies at the Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security (CSU). A former law enforcement officer, Jamie now researches threats to national and economic security; her current focus is on the nexus of money laundering with border governance, and transnational cooperation and collaboration. Her latest co-edited books are Dirty Money: Financial Crime in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023), Combating Financial Crime: Intended and Unintended Consequences (Springer, 2025), and The Financial War on Crime and Terrorism: Opportunities and Challenges (Springer, 2026).
