Human trafficking is devastating for victims, but typically low-risk for the criminals, whose activities are largely hidden from view. To disrupt human trafficking, law enforcement is partnering with NGOs, financial institutions and forward-thinking technology providers (like QuantaVerse) that offer new artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions.
QuantaVerse was interviewed for The Economist’s human trafficking documentary alongside other experts including HSBC and Liberty Asia.
Per the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, human trafficking is defined as:
- Sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; or
- The recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
Human trafficking is a multi-billion-dollar industry that destroys families and communities affecting tens of millions worldwide. Yet in 2017 there were fewer than 10,000 worldwide convictions of human traffickers according to the U.S. Department of State’s 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report. As criminals have become more sophisticated, it’s imperative that law enforcement and financial institutions adopt new and evolving technologies such as AI to help identify suspicious transactions indicative of human trafficking red flags.
Recent Posts
Fighting Money Laundering in the Face of AML Budget Constraints
When it comes to anti-money laundering (AML), compliance is a cost center for financial institutions and budget pressures are the norm. This begs the question: “How can institutions hold the line on costs while demonstrating their support for AML compliance?” This is...
Key Lessons Learned from The Basel AML Index 2021
Financial institutions around the world need to heed the warnings highlighted in The Basel AML Index 2021. The annual global study of 110 jurisdictions, which assesses money laundering risks around the world and ranks jurisdictions on how well they’re addressing them, found that the fight against dirty money remains a challenge. It also notes there is still too big a gap between promises to change behavior and actual results.
Three New Challenges to Stemming Terrorist Financing, and How Financial Institutions Can Counter Them
In the two decades since the 9/11 tragedy, new technologies have emerged, new laws have been introduced, cryptocurrencies are continuously changing the way money moves around the world, and a global pandemic has radically changed transactional behaviors and processes. This post brings readers up to date on how terrorist financing is evolving in line with current trends and explains what financial institutions can do to most effectively counter criminal activities.
Resources
Technology
Solutions