Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Alexandra Ragi, and today we're talking about criminal finance and its

connection to corruption. My guest is Neil Walsh. Neil works with the United Nations in Austria,

where he is the head of the cybercrime,

anti-money laundering, and counterfinancing of terrorism department.

Neil, thanks so much for joining me.

My pleasure, Alexander. Good afternoon from Vienna.

Yes, yes. Pleasure to talk to you.

Why don't you start by explaining the role of the United Nations?

I think people are really pretty familiar with the role of the United Nations. I think people are really pretty familiar with

the role of domestic enforcement agencies, national enforcement agencies, and perhaps more so with

Interpol. But we hear less about the work that the United Nations is doing in this respect.

The role of the UN, we aren't an investigative body.

We're not a law enforcement agency.

We're not a prosecution agency.

We're not an intelligence service.

We are simply diplomacy.

But the reason that we get involved in the crime side of the business is that by helping

to counter crime, helping to counter terrorism,

helping to counter corruption is a core bit of helping society to generally get into a better

place.

And that the UN offers some drugs and crime where I'm based in Vienna, we have the leadership

across the UN for doing that.

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