MEDIA ADVISORY
For Immediate Release
August 3, 2009
Contact:
Rob Garver
Phone: (305) 854-2345 ext. 217
E-mail: rgarver@assetrecoverywatch.comCharles A. Intriago
Phone: (305) 854-2345 ext. 205
Email: cai@assetrecoverywatch.com
Global organization that targets criminal assets expands reach beyond law enforcement to include private sector institutions and firms that seek asset recoveryi
The International Association for Asset Recovery will bring vital services not just to law enforcement agencies, but to businesses, financial institutions and professionals worldwide through training, information and networking so they score greater success at finding and recovering wrongfully-held assets.
In a major expansion of the community it serves, the organization that has gathered together law enforcement and prosecutors who specialize in stripping criminals of their wealth has launched a strategic shift to bring its services to the huge global market of financial institutions, businesses and professionals who trace and recover assets for their rightful owners.
The newly-named International Association for Asset Recovery—formerly the Association of Certified Asset Forfeiturei Specialists—is widening its training, informational, outreach and networking programs.
IAAR Executive Director Michael McDonald is a distinguished former Special Agent of the US Internal Revenue Service, where he pioneered asset recovery innovations. Since his retirement from IRS, he has served as a financial crime advisor to financial institutions.
IAAR will serve the needs of financial institutions, businesses and professional firms and individuals who represent their principals, clients and victims in recovering assets wrongfully held by others.
The victims include those of Bernie Madoff and others who have turned the opening years of this century into an era of fraud without historical parallel.
IAAR’s sister organization—the news and information Web site AssetForfeitureWatch.com—has been renamed AssetRecoveryWatch.com and will expand its coverage to meet the needs of this broader community.
This new initiative springs from an effort, launched last year by former federal prosecutor Charles A. Intriago, aimed at law enforcement and prosecutors specializing in asset forfeiture. The effort was aimed at improving government efforts that now win back a tiny fraction of the billions stolen each year by fraudsters, drug traffickers, mobsters and other criminals.
Widening the reach
“Our aims were right but our focus was too narrow,” says Intriago. “There are thousands of businesses and individuals who pursue the same thing as the government, use similar weapons, need similar skills, encounter the same roadblocks, but communicate little and run on parallel tracks.”
Intriago’s previous successes include Money Laundering Alert, the pioneering publication he launched in 1989, and the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS), the widely respected 9,000-member organization that provides training and certification to AML professionals in more than 100 countries.
“There’s a vast common ground where law enforcement stand with private sector parties who work in asset tracing and recovery. They include banks, receivers, trustees, insurance companies, lawyers, accountants, corporate monitors, trademark counterfeit victims, forensic accountants and auditors, investigators, liquidators and others,” Intriago said.
“Like law enforcement, they routinely do battle with overseas bank secrecy, conduct complex cases in multiple jurisdictions and gather evidence from secretive jurisdictions. And they also need smart, sophisticated intelligence and training.”
Creating a credentialing system
What’s more, Intriago says, a widely respected and rigorous program of professional certification, which IAAR is developing, is also essential: “It’s vital that institutions, agencies and individuals who hire these professionals be confident that those they hire meet strict professional standards of knowledge and competence.”
Intriago notes he’s familiar with the challenge: “We accomplished those goals in the money laundering arena and we’ll again set the gold standard in this crucial mission, whose goal is to bring justice to persons and institutions deprived of assets to which they have a moral and legal right.”
Meeting a wider need for good training
The need for sophisticated, specialized training is something more business and commercial entities are discovering, from receivers handling Ponzi and other fraud schemes, to banks victimized by fraudulent borrowers and bogus partners, to insurers that pay huge fraudulent health care claims.
“The government does not have the resources to recover the assets these institutions and individuals urgently and justifiably seek,” says Intriago.
“Government agencies have their own challenges and they also need the training and information services we provide as much as their private sector counterparts do.”
The work of asset tracing and asset recovery often requires close cooperation between the private and public sectors, something the new organization will foster and include in its training, networking and information offerings.
“The kind of partnership this work requires,” Intriago says, “is one I’m familiar with from my 17 years in the anti-money laundering field. There, private-public cooperation is routine. Bank compliance officers, for instance, work closely with law enforcement and regulators to report and pursue suspicious transactions.”
Seeks close public-private cooperation
“In these times of scarce resources there is a compelling case for close bonds between the public and private sectors in this field.”
Intriago and IAAR co-founder, Joy Intriago, who conceived ACAMS in 1999, decided to rename their organization to dramatize the strategic widening of its objectives.
Enhancing career opportunities
“The professionals in this field need an organization that has an uncompromising commitment to furthering the skills in this field and creating enhanced opportunities for professional advancement,” Intriago concludes.
Under its widened mandate, IAAR will hold its first Annual Conference at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on November 9-10, 2009. The full program will be announced in mid-August 2009.
IAAR will soon offer a full course load of training for both sectors, and, in 2010, will launch its credentialing program to enable professionals in the private and public sectors to achieve accreditation as recognized experts in the asset tracing and recovery field.
(Press credentials for the Las Vegas conference will be provided to accredited members of the media. Contact Christine Alba at (305) 854-2345, ext. 214.)
