Hossam M. Abd El-Rahman, CAMS
Head of compliance at Samba Financial Group, Dubai. He focuses on AML compliance and training. He has experience in financial statement audits, internal control reviews, fraud examining, insurance claims, and business re-engineering. He was formerly a compliance supervisor at Kuwait Finance House and a public accountant for the firms PriceWaterHouseCoopers and Arthur Andersen. He has also conducted AML training for banks and investment companies across the Middle East.

Hany Abou-El-Fotouh, CAMS
First vice president, corporate governance and compliance group head, Arab Banking Corporation, Egypt, he has been involved in compliance and anti-money laundering at leading banks for over ten years. He provides advice and direction to the Board and management with respect to compliance with the laws, regulations, corporate governance principles and code of business conduct. Previously, he worked in various compliance functions at Oman International Bank, Banque Saudi Fransi and HSBC Bank Egypt among others.

Hussam A. Al-Abed
General manager of Risk Management Consultants in Jordan, he has been an AML consultant and trainer in the banking industry since 1995. He was recently appointed as an advisor to the Association of Banks in Jordan on anti-money laundering, the financing of terrorism, bank fraud and security. He is the Chairman of the Association of Anti-Money Laundering Specialists’ (ACAMS) Middle East Membership Taskforce, and is the founder and editor of the Middle East Bank Security newsletter.

Bashir A. Al-Nakib, CAMS
Head of compliance, Lebanese Canadian Bank, Lebanon, he ensures bank wide compliance with anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing. In addition to being a member of the Lebanon Bankers Association AML Committee and World Union of Arab Bank – group certified compliance officer, he is the founder and moderator of two discussion forums comprised of AML professionals and Lebanon compliance officers.

Adel Hamad Al-Qulish
Executive secretary, Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENAFATF), Bahrain, he coordinates member countries' efforts in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing and oversees the process of mutual evaluations and the training and typologies efforts with member countries. He also led the efforts with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to provide technical assistance to member countries.

Zohair Sai’d Al Rabi’i, CAMS
AVP of compliance training and AML at Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB), he established with full configuration the first compliance and AML unit of DIB in 2001. Currently, he oversees training on AML/CFT issues for DIB staff as well as for different training institutes like the UAE Institute for Banking and Financial Studies - EIBFS and others. He also published his first book on money laundering in 2005, and made the first official translation of the FATF - famous Forty plus Nine AML/CFT recommendations into Arabic.

Aline Tufenkjian Aziz, CAMS
Anti-money laundering research professional at Credit Libanais sal, one of the top ten banks in Lebanon, where she coordinates the bank’s anti-money laundering committee. The committee meets periodically to evaluate suspicious cases of money laundering and reports them to the Special Investigations Commission at the Central Bank of Lebanon. Ms. Aziz is currently preparing a PhD on the Private Sector Dialogue (PSD) and Arab-American efforts aiming to counter money laundering and terrorist financing. She is a regular speaker at international conferences with the Union of Arab Banks, on issues related to AML-CFT.

Faisal Ghazi Azzazi, CAMS
Executive manager, risk management and compliance, Jordan Islamic Bank for Finance and Investment, Jordan. He has extensive AML training experience throughout the Middle East and Africa. He is a member of the Group of Certified Compliance Officers (GCCO) -Union of Arab Banks, member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) USA, member of the Basel II Operational Risk Committee / Central Bank of Jordan and member of the Compliance and Risk Management Committee at Jordan Islamic Bank.

Mohammad Baasiri
Secretary of the Special Investigation Commission for Fighting Money Laundering at the financial intelligence unit in Lebanon and chairman of the US-MENA Private Sector Dialogue (PSD). Mr. Baasiri represented Lebanon in the founding of the Middle East North Africa Financial Action Task Force (MENAFATF), and is the founding member of the Lebanese Association of CPAs. He has spoken on various AML issues throughout the Middle East, Europe, United States and Canada.

Helen Baines
Vice president of the legal and compliance department at asset management firm Algebra Capital, Dubai. Previously, she was anti-money laundering compliance director for the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan for Western Union, where she developed and implemented its compliance monitoring and due diligence procedures. She also worked in compliance at Abbey National PLC in the UK and for several banking and financial services companies in Dubai, including Emirates Bank International PJSC.

John J. Byrne, CAMS
Senior vice president and AML strategy executive at Bank of America in Washington, he assists in the development of the bank’s anti-money laundering policies and dialogues with federal and state regulatory and enforcement agencies on money laundering issues, regulations and policies. For 17 years, he was the director of the Center for Regulatory Compliance of the American Bankers Association and the leading spokesman on money laundering issues, legislation and regulations of the U.S. banking industry. He is a longtime member of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group.

Marc Hambach
Associate director and head of AML for the Dubai Financial Services Authority, Dubai, he is responsible for the prudential oversight and conduct of business supervision of several large European and U.S. institutions in areas of asset management, fund administration, private banking, investment banking, and Islamic Finance. He also manages the development and implementation of the DIFC’s AML/CTF rules and regulations, which he authored. He formerly worked for Clearstream International in Luxembourg as Company Secretary, Legal Counsel and Head of Compliance.

Charles A. Intriago
Founder of Money Laundering Alert, in 1989, and moneylaundering.com and lavadodinero.com, leading authorities on money laundering and terrorist financing. Earlier he served in Miami as a U.S. federal prosecutor specializing in corruption cases, as special counsel on organized crime to Governor Reubin Askew of Florida, and in Washington, as chief counsel to a U.S. House subcommittee that oversaw the operations of all U.S. agencies now involved in the money laundering control effort.

Alexander Isaac, CAMS
Senior manager and compliance officer for Investment Data Services in Dubai, he is tasked with performing due diligence on new clients and funds as well as liaising with regulators to ensure the implementation of regulatory changes. He is also responsible for the maintenance of the organization’s compliance monitoring program. Previously, he was the manager of the AML department at Blom Bank in Beirut for nine years, and helped to develop their AML/CTF program.

Barry M. Koch, CAMS
Global head of anti-money laundering, American Express Company, New York, he manages the corporate AML and sanctions programs and oversees the compliance programs for its foreign exchange and travelers cheques businesses. He is a member of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group. Previously, he was a senior vice president of risk management and investigations at Charles Schwab & Co.

Collin Dennis James Lobo
Director of the forensic services practice for Middle East and South Asia, KPMG, Dubai, he has carried out numerous fraud investigations and money laundering related engagements in many jurisdictions on behalf of prosecuting authorities. He was involved in investigations of financial and other irregularities in relation to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and allegations of money laundering. He has worked on various fraud and corruption related assignments in U.S.A, Europe and Asia.

Mohamad Samir Mansour, CAMS
Head of AML and CTF Unit, Commercial Bank of Qatar, he is responsible for the development and implementation of anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing policies and procedures across the Commercial Bank and its Diner Club franchises in Qatar, Egypt, Bahrain and Oman. He is also responsible for AML and CFT training program for all bank employees. He was formerly employed at the Special Investigation Commission for Fighting Money Laundering of Lebanon’s FIU, where he focused on identifying and providing AML/CFT technical assistance needs to MENAFATF member countries.

Michael R. McDonald, CAMS
Principal, Michael McDonald and Associates, Miami, a consulting firm specializing in anti-money laundering issues and independent examinations of the AML controls of banks and money transmitters and the operations of government agencies. For 28 years, he was a special agent of the U.S. IRS Criminal Investigation Division, where he was a pioneer of the U.S. money laundering control effort helping to found the legendary Operation Greenback in South Florida in 1979.

Dany Nassar, CAMS
Head of compliance at BLC Bank, Lebanon, he ensures that the bank is complying with laws, regulations, internal policies and procedures and the code of conduct applicable to its banking activities. This includes money laundering and terrorist financing prevention. He is also responsible for the coordination of the compliance activities of the banks within the BLC group. He was formerly the head of group audit for BLC in Lebanon, as well as an internal audit manager for BLC France in the UAE.

James Richards, CAMS  
Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering officer, Wells Fargo, San Francisco, he is a widely respected and innovative AML officer who helped create the concept of financial intelligence units within financial institutions to coordinate a company-wide approach to the prevention of money laundering and financial crime. He is a former Canadian prosecutor and served as anti-money laundering operations executive at Bank of America in Boston and FleetBoston Financial Group. He authored a book on transnational and organized crime and money laundering.

Mansoor A. Siddiqi, CAMS
Manager group training services, Emirates Bank Group, Dubai, he has worked in various banks of international repute in UK, Middle East, India and Nigeria. He also creates and delivers training programs on banking, trade finance and anti-money laundering to banks and corporate entities in Central Asia, Middle East and Europe. Mansoor has also spoken on money laundering at international conferences held in Dubai, Egypt and Prague.

Richard Small
Global anti-money laundering leader, GE Money, Stamford, Connecticut, and one of the leading world experts on money laundering issues, he previously served as the managing director of global anti-money laundering at Citigroup, overseeing and helping to develop global AML policies and procedures. He joined the Federal Reserve System as special counsel in 1989, with responsibility for all Bank Secrecy Act and money laundering matters, conducting investigations of complex financial transactions, suspicious activities and related enforcement actions. He is on the Advisory Board of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists.

Austin Wiehe
Attaché for the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi, he has worked for many years as a U.S. government analyst supporting the formulation and implementation of U.S. financial sanctions against both countries and persons, as well as analyzing the effectiveness and impact of these programs. Most recently he has served as the Chief of OFAC’s Country Programs Section and Foreign Terrorism Division.

Sarkis Yoghourtdjian
Advisor in banking supervision and regulation at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington, D.C., he has oversight responsibilities for international training and technical assistance as well as international relations. He also serves as an advisor to international organizations such as International Monetary Fund and World Bank. He is a member of the Advisory Group of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Financial Regulators’ Initiative as well as member of the Consultative Group of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Regulators’ Initiative of the U.S. government’s Middle East Partnership Initiative.