Illicit Trade

Money laundering. Terrorist finance. Drug trafficking. Arms smuggling. Illicit trafficking of wildlife, human body parts, and ancient historical artifacts. Tax havens. Proliferation of WMDs. Oil bunkering. Human smuggling and the modern day slave trade. Conflict minerals and blood diamonds. These are not just abstract terms, but billion dollar globalized industries that are part of the world’s globally interconnected economy and which overlap with and exacerbate terrorism, war and conflict, corruption, authoritarianism, and other contemporary security threats.

This unique summer school course pierces the vale of secrecy around these issues and teaches students about illicit financing and trading; not only through theory and book study, but by learning the actual practices and techniques criminals, terrorists, and dictators use to obscure their profits and evade accountability for their actions, and the corresponding techniques to counter them.