On 24 and 25 April 2025, the Professorship for Economic Criminal Law, Compliance and Digitalisation held the intensive course “The Development of Money Laundering in the 20th and 21st Century.”

The course featured a distinguished expert from the United Kingdom: Simon Lord, founder and director of protect AML Services (UK) and Senior Advisor at Financial Transparency Advisors in Vienna. He served for many years as a Financial Investigator and Strategic Intelligence Analyst with the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), gaining extensive experience in financial investigations.

In this intensive course, Simon Lord explained how the understanding of money laundering and the strategies to combat it have evolved over time. He traced the development from relatively simple techniques such as cash smuggling to more sophisticated modern methods involving cryptocurrencies. In particular, he provided detailed insights into techniques and mechanisms used in Informal Value Transfer Services and Trade-Based Money Laundering.

In addition, he outlined how international standards, legislation, and law enforcement practices have adapted to these threats—highlighting key UN conventions, FATF recommendations, and the rise of public-private partnerships. The course concluded with a case study and personal reflections on investigative experience related to EncroChat.

The course was conducted in English.