1st Edition
Threat Finance Disconnecting the Lifeline of Organised Crime and Terrorism
Biography
Shima Keene is a security advisor and scholar practitioner specialising in Threat Finance, advising and working closely with numerous government and law enforcement agencies around the globe. She is a former investment banker, corporate strategist and soldier. Between 2004 and 2008, Shima Keene was based at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom where she developed the concept of asymmetric financial warfare. More recently she was Special Advisor to the MoD responsible for the development of Fin COIN strategies in Afghanistan. Dr Keene is currently the Director of the Threat Finance Programme at the Institute for Statecraft, London and is a visiting lecturer at several academic institutions where she lectures in Terrorism, Financial Crime, International Criminal Law, Security Risk Management and Maritime Piracy. She also serves as an Expert Witness to the Crown Prosecution Service on matters relating to the financial aspects of organised crime and terrorism.
’Dr Shima Keene has shed fresh light on and deepened our understanding of a subject critical to international security. Despite broad consensus that countering the finance of organized crime and terrorism represents both a vital requirement and a tremendous opportunity, few understand the nature of the problem or how to act against it. Keene’s comprehensive, accessible, and compelling book should be the new standard text on the subject for policymakers, intelligence officials, law enforcement officers, and anyone responsible for combating terrorist organizations and transnational organized crime networks. Dr Keene’s recommendations for improving financial intelligence, developing comprehensive counter-finance methods, adapting law enforcement organizations, and crafting options to target criminal and terrorist financial streams should be adopted with urgency. Dr. Keene argues that improving understanding of the basic concepts of terrorist and criminal finance is essential; reading her book is an excellent starting point in that connection. Brigadier General H.R. McMaster, U.S. Army, former commander of Task Force Shafafiyat (Transparency) in Afghanistan 'This book provides a lucid education on the often inconvenient realities of serious economic crime and identifies with clinical precision the reasons why it sometimes seems beyond the practical capabilities of the law to deal with it. What makes it so important, however, is Dr Keene’s ability to mobilise the difficult thoughts that need to be thought if modern democracy is to survive the corruptive threats of crime and terror and their ability at the more sophisticated levels to exploit the modern accommodations of international finance and cyberspace with apparent impunity. The challenge, so vividly described here, can appear overwhelming; but the lasting influence left by this seminal work is the conviction that it will be more adequately met if some of the current cosy thinking on this subject in relev
