Our Environmental, Social and corporate Governance (ESG) specialist discusses the role that financial intelligence can play in protecting the natural world, alongside two other international experts.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the intractable problem of wildlife trafficking through Asia’s wet markets.

Yet sadly, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to environmental crime. From illegal logging in Borneo, to guerrilla gold-mining in Papua New Guinea, to wholesale wildlife smuggling, crimes against the natural world are surging across the region. These are all profit-motivated crimes and the proceeds are inevitably washed through some of the leading financial centres and parked in “rule of law” economies.