Welcome back to the podcast, Brib, Swindle, or Steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge.

Today we're discussing the need to reform private investment funds and real estate investments

if we're going to advance the global anti-corruption agenda.

My guest is Josh Kirchenbaum.

He's a non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy, focusing on illicit finance. Josh joined the

Marshall Fund from the Treasury Department, where he worked from 2011 to 2018. He served as

acting director of the Office of Special Measures at Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Finzan, overseeing international money laundering investigations.

Previously, Josh worked on Iran sanctions at Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC.

Josh, thank you for joining me.

Thank you for having me, Alexander.

This is a field that I know you're passionate about. So why don't you just start by setting the scene for us? Why is this something

we all need to be looking at? Private equity and hedge funds and venture capital are abstract to a lot

of the public, but they definitely present a potential major illicit

finance risk, both in terms of corruption and bribery, as well as traditional money laundering

and national security concerns that I think isn't yet well understood, but a lot of reporting

in the last couple of years points to the fact that this is the major pot of money out there that regulators and policymakers need to focus on in the next few years.

It's a volume issue as much as anything else. We're all working on different aspects of financial crime, but this is where the bulk of the misconduct is happening.

If we look at available channels to access the U.S. financial system, this is the channel where

you have sophistication and large volume, but a lack of rules. So a lot of opacity, but not a lot

of disclosure requirements, as opposed to most of the traditional banking or security sectors.

Can you talk us through how dirty money is siphoned off through private investment funds?

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