ELI to speak at the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) conference

ELI’s Executive Director, Andrea Crosta, presented at the TRANSACT conference alongside leading academic and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) active in the disruption of illicit commerce

ETA is the world’s leading advocacy and trade association for the payments industry. At TRANSACT, financial institutions, networks, payments companies, fintech and technology innovators convened to shape and engage in dialogue regarding the digital payment industry.

The conference featured a series of experts, who were invited to speak about the interrelatedness of focused criminal areas and the broader ecosystem of dark commerce:

Dr. Shelley: Human Trafficking- Professor of Public Policy, Director, Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center in DC
Dr. Hashemi: Antiquities Trafficking- Postdoctoral Research Fellow Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) Schar School of Policy and Governments
Dr. Rogers: Disinformation and Hate & Harm- Co-founder and CTO of Global Disinformation Index New York, NY

ELI’s Andrea Crosta presented about the ways in which transnational wildlife crime networks utilize digital payment systems to carry out their criminal activities. In particular, Andrea described the ways in which transnational wildlife trafficking networks engage in money laundering, moving money from cash to crypto to Hawala to disguise their illicit activities.

Furthermore, Andrea highlighted ELI’s research on Convergence, in which environmental crime overlaps significantly with other serious crimes, such as money laundering and human trafficking. The intelligence ELI gathers regarding criminal convergence is a critical component of effectively stopping environmental crime, as it provides government and law enforcement authorities with multiple forms of actionable intelligence to effectively intervene and charge these trafficking networks.

Powered by Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), the world’s largest payments industry trade group, TRANSACT is where financial institutions, networks, payments companies, fintech and technology innovators will convene to make the deals that shape the industry. ETA is the world’s leading advocacy and trade association for the payments industry.