HKU FinTech
Leading FinTech Research and Education in Asia
Financial Crimes
From An Undercover Agent's Perspective
Conversation with Bill Majcher
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Episode 1 - Part 2 Now Live
With a storied past that reads like a Hollywood screenplay – Bill Majcher has lived it. After 23 years with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he retired with the rank of Inspector. For two decades as a Mountie, he was an undercover operative that infiltrated drug cartels, and engaged with terrorist and extremist groups operating globally. For extended periods, Bill worked covertly in numerous cities outside of Canada including, Miami, Chicago, New York and San Francisco working alongside a host of US Federal agencies.
In a world where there are a great many anti-money laundering compliance experts, he laments that “there are relatively few money-laundering experts”. It’s not an empty boast because unlike most of those trying to thwart money laundering, terrorist financing, and sanctions violations, Bill learned first hand how some of the world’s most sophisticated financial criminals plied their craft – by getting his hands dirty and actually doing it as “one of them”.
As he himself will tell you without any varnish or flourishes, for purposes of maintaining his cover, he used and abused the world’s capital markets for 20 years while in the “employ” or “service” of a wide variety of criminals and criminal organisations. During that time, he learned that many of the worst offenders were the so-called respectable members of society that facilitated such crimes – namely, professional services providers.
After completing university and prior to joining the RCMP in 1985, Bill worked as a professional market maker trading Eurobonds in London, which provided the foundation for his lengthy covert career working within global capital markets, participating in all manner of financial crimes.
Watch out for our next episode with Ron Yu and Fred Chan on NFTs and the fraud issues associated with them.
Regulatory Ramblings Podcast
Welcome to Regulatory Ramblings, a new podcast from a team at The University of Hong Kong on the intersection of all things pertaining to finance, technology, law and regulation. Hosted by the HKU Reg/Tech Lab, HKU-Standard Chartered FinTech Academy and the HKU-edX Professional Certificate in FinTech, join us as we hear from luminaries across multiple fields and professions as they share their candid thoughts in a stress-free environment - rather than the soundbites one typically hears from the mainstream press.
Regulatory Ramblings is a forum for those that appreciate long-form conversation. While it is something that may be regarded as lost art of an older time, it is nonetheless sorely needed in an age when glibness and flippancy pass for analysis in conventional journalism.
Having said that, we are grateful to be able to avail ourselves of modern technological resources to bring you chats with people you are probably not going to hear from elsewhere.
Regulatory Ramblings Podcast List
Ajay Shamdasani is a veteran writer, editor and researcher based in Hong Kong. He holds an AB in history and government from Ripon College, JD and MIPCT degrees from the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce Law School, and an LLM in financial regulation from the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law.
His 15-year long career as a financial and legal journalist began as deputy editor of A Plus magazine – the journal of the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants. From there, he assumed the helm of Macau Business magazine as its editor-in-chief, and later, joined Asialaw magazine as its deputy editor.
More recently, he spent close to seven years as a senior correspondent with Thomson Reuters’ subscription-based trade-wire service Regulatory Intelligence/Compliance Complete (previously called Complinet) in Hong Kong. While there, he covered regulatory developments in that city, as well as Singapore, India and South Korea.
