The Assembly Europe

Sebastiano is Head of the Anti-Money Laundering Supervision and Regulation at the Bank of Italy. He represents Italy in the EU AMLA Supervisory Board.

He joined Banca d'Italia in 1986. Between 1988 and 2012, he worked in the Supervisory Regulations and Policies Directorate. He became Head of the International Cooperation Division in 2005. Between 1991 and 2012, he chaired several supervisory working groups, including those of CEBS/EBA, the ECB's Banking Supervision Committee, the Advisory Technical Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB), and the main subgroups of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Between 2012 and 2019 he negotiated the EU financial services legislation on behalf of Italy, particularly the Banking Union framework. In July-December 2014, he chaired EU Council working groups and represented the Council in trilogues, including on AMLD IV.

Between May 2019 and April 2024, he was a member of the Single Resolution Board (SRB), and in this capacity he chaired the SRB and EBA Resolution Committees, the FSB working group on banks’ cross border crisis management, represented the SRB in the EU Financial Services Committee, the EBA Board of Supervisors and the ESRB General Board. He has published numerous articles and policy discussion papers on prudential banking and resolution regulation.

Richard May is the Head of Financial Crime for Corporate and Institutional Banking and HSBC Europe (Money Laundering Reporting Officer). In this role, Rich is responsible for providing subject matter expertise on financial crime risk mitigation to HSBC’s global corporate and institutional banking businesses. Previously, Rich was the Global Head of Complex Investigations and Group Head of Risk Assessment and in these roles Rich provided strategic direction and oversight of the firm’s most complex investigative programs across global functions, regions, and countries related to fraud, anti-money laundering, countering the financing of terrorism, sanctions, anti-bribery and corruption.  In addition, Rich worked closely with Google on building an Artificial Intelligence customer monitoring tool to better detect financial crime. 

Prior to joining HSBC, Rich served in a variety of roles at the US Department of the Treasury. In his last position, Rich was the Deputy Associate Director for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN) Enforcement Division. During his time at FinCEN, Rich supervised investigations involving Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Colombia, Panama, Honduras, several European and many other countries. 

Before his time at FinCEN, Rich served as the Chief for the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Section.  In this role, Rich supervised the investigation, development, and implementation of sanctions under a variety of authorities—primarily focused on Iran, Syria, and North Korea.  Before OFAC, Rich was an intelligence analyst at the US Department of the Treasury, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Counterterrorism Centre. 

Jennifer “Jen” Neese, a Special Agent with IRS-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), is currently serving as Deputy Attaché in London, UK. Attaches facilitate the exchange of information with our foreign partners which is integral to IRS-CI’s international casework. Additionally, as part of the commitment to CI’s priorities and international strategy, our attachés gather evidence and financial intelligence, coordinate global financial investigations on behalf of CI field offices, receive information from informants, assist with special investigative activities and other duties as required by CI or partners. 

Prior to her current role, Deputy Attaché Neese Acted as the Director of CI’s Data Management and Governance Section. During her 20- year career with IRS-CI, she has served in roles of Deputy Chief of Staff; Senior Analyst to Executive Director: Advanced Analytics & Innovation (AAI); Supervisory Special Agent, Detroit Field Office (Grand Rapids, POD); and Senior Special Agent in the Tampa Field Office (Orlando, POD). Special Agent Neese has led multiple agency-wide projects, including those involving public and private partners. During her investigative tenure, she has worked on a variety of financial investigations, involving Tax Evasion and Significant Money Laundering in the areas of: Cyber and Cryptocurrency, Return Preparer Fraud, Identity Theft, International Tax, Domestic Terrorism, Bank Secrecy Act Violations and Organized Crime.

Toms Platacis has been serving as the Head of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) since September 28, 2023. Prior to this, he held the position of Deputy Head of FIU from January 2021 and, from June 1, 2022, served as the Acting Head of FIU. 

Toms began his career at FIU leading the Strategic Analysis and Cooperation Coordination Division, where he played a key role in introducing a public-private partnership mechanism in Latvia’s AML/CFT/CPF system. 

His expertise includes international evaluations, having participated in MONEYVAL and FATF assessments. Additionally, he leads Latvia’s delegation to MONEYVAL and FATF. Toms previously served as Regional Representative for the Europe I Regional Working Group within the international organization Egmont Group. Currently, Toms holds the position of Vice-Chair of MONEYVAL. 

Toms holds a Master's degree in Law from the University of Latvia and has studied in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He has further enhanced his knowledge at Harvard Kennedy School. In 2021, he obtained the ACAMS CAMS certificate. 

His previous professional experience includes working at the Deloitte Legal law firm, where he specialized in financial crime prevention and contributed to several large-scale international projects. 

In 2023, Toms was recognized as a "Rising AFC Professional of the Year" by ACAMS and was also included in the "Forbes Baltics 30 Under 30" list. 

Katharina Staas (formerly Stoll) as Head of Global Sanctions Control at Commerzbank AG is responsible for the bank’s global sanctions screening processes. Her background includes 10+ years of professional experience in the second and third lines of defense with a focus on financial crime.

Kevin Streat is the Chief Information Officer of HAVEN256 and brings over 33 years of experience in cybersecurity, digital forensics, and insider threat investigation to the company. He is known for building insider threat and forensic-led cybersecurity programs aligned to SOC 2, NIST, ISO 27001, and GDPR; mitigating enterprise risks and data losses; and ensuring organizations are protected and audit ready. Throughout his career, work has been recognized by the Department of Defense, the U.S. Air Force, and the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., including EC-Council Top 100. 

Prior to joining HAVEN256, Streat served as CIO and CTO at HashWorks Industries, a leading energy advisory and investment firm. Before HashWorks, he spent over 12 years at ARMA Global Corporation (a General Dynamics company), serving as a user behavior and forensics expert, an IT service operations manager, and a cyber incidents and services manager. He previously served 22 years in the U.S. Air Force as an AETC information assurance officer, MajCom communication coordination centre crew commander, and cyber security engineer. Streat holds a Masters of Science in Information Security, along with certifications including CCISO, CEH, CHFI, CBSP, and CDPSE.

Anna Streuli is a seasoned risk and compliance executive with over a decade of experience in managing non-financial risk and compliance across international financial institutions. She recently joined Helaba (Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen) Group in Frankfurt, Germany, where she is leading the establishment of the new Chief Risk Office. In this role, Anna oversees departments responsible for Risk Strategy & Regulation, ESG & Credit Risk Policy, and Information Security Management.

Before joining Helaba, Anna held several senior roles in financial crime compliance at Danske Bank, most recently as Head of the Group’s Post Resolution Office. In this capacity, she was responsible for ensuring compliance with obligations arising from Danske Bank Group’s December 2022 Plea Agreement with U.S. authorities (DOJ and SEC) and the Danish Special Crime Unit following the Estonia matter. 

Prior to her time in Denmark, Anna spent several years at a Big Four consultancy in Switzerland, advising international banks on risk and compliance transformation programs, monitorships, and M&A-related due diligence initiatives. Her primary focus was on investigating, mitigating, and remediating financial crime compliance risks across multiple jurisdictions.

Anna holds a diploma in Political Economy (Dipl.Vw.) from Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, a bachelor’s degree in Intercultural Communication (B.A.) from Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, and several industry-recognized professional certifications, including CAMS and CFE.

Craig Timm is the Senior Director of AML at ACAMS.

Prior to joining ACAMS, Craig had more than 15 years of anti-financial crime experience across the public and private sectors. At the Department of Justice, Craig served as a Deputy Chief in the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section (now Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section) at headquarters in Washington, DC. In that role, he led a team of prosecutors responsible for enforcing criminal violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, U.S. economic sanctions, and money laundering laws committed by financial institutions and their employees. He led the prosecution of some of the largest financial institutions in the world including HSBC and BNP Paribas. Craig began his career with the Department of Justice as an Assistant United States Attorney in Arizona. At the Department of Justice, he was the recipient of numerous awards including the Attorney General’s Crime Victim’s Restoration Award, the Assistant Attorney General’s Award for Exceptional Service, and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director’s Meritorious Service Award.

At Bank of America, Craig was a Financial Crimes Executive responsible for Strategic Initiatives. These initiatives included participation in the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group, 314(b) information sharing initiatives, and the Wolfsberg Group as well as managing the day-to-day liaison with FinCEN, the U.S. Treasury, senior financial crimes policy officials at the OCC and Federal Reserve, key law enforcement agencies, and the U.S. Department of Justice. He also spent several years as the Financial Crimes Executive for the Global Wealth and Investment Management business lines where he served as the designated Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Officer for Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust.

Craig has an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and a law degree from the Northwestern University School of Law.

Michele Valeriani, Managing Director, is the Group Chief Anti Financial Crime Officer of Assicurazioni Generali Group. Michele has been appointed by the Board of Assicurazioni Generali SpA and directly reports to it, hierarchically. He is also a stable participant to the Group Risk and Control Committee and member of the Generali Global Leadership Group. He has been also appointed Group AML Officer & Group Money Laundering Reporting Officer; Group International Sanctions Officer and Group Head of Anti Bribery and Corruption. 

Before joining Generali in April 2021 he was the Global Head of Anti Financial Crime and Group Bank Secrecy Act Officer at UniCredit Group, where he was an Executive Vice President, also appointed responsible for the UniCredit Monitorship Liaison Office, in charge of the Global Remediation Program which UniCredit implemented as a fallout of the investigation of the US Authorities in relation to Sanctions Compliance matters. Before, he covered different senior managerial roles in Compliance at UniCredit, being the Global Head of Risk Assessment, Controls, Training & Culture for Financial and non Financial Crime Risks (Anti Financial Crime, Market Integrity, Customer Protection, Conduct Risk) and previously Global Head of Compliance Governance, Oversight and Special Projects. 

Michele started his career in 2004 in the Investment Banking Division of Deutsche Bank AG, within the European M&A, ECM and DCM desks. In late 2006 he joined the restructuring and turnaround practice of Bain & Company, being in charge of debt restructuring, equity capital markets, corporate finance and financial modelling for companies in distressed situations.  

He graduated in Economics from Bocconi University with major in Finance and studied also International Marketing at the New York Leonard Stern Business School and International Business at the Copenhagen Business School.  

He holds an MBA in Finance and Management with honor from the IE Business School in Madrid and completed an Executive Program on Leadership and Governance at Insead, Paris, one on Digital technologies at IMD, Lausanne and one on Sustainability and Disruptive Technologies at MIT, Boston.

Jaap is current the Head of the Detecting Financial Crime (DFC) unit, which is ABN AMRO Bank’s 1LOD centre of excellence for financial crime risk management. The DFC unit maintains and executes the standards, systems and operations for all financial crime risk management processes. Jaap joined ABN AMRO Bank as their Global Head, AML & Sanctions in April 2021. Prior to that he was with Standard Chartered Bank for a over seven years where he worked in the Financial Crime Surveillance (screening & monitoring) unit based out of London, and prior to that as Head of Retail Financial Crime Compliance based in Singapore. Prior to Standard Chartered, Jaap worked at ING Bank in various financial crime compliance capacities. All in all, Jaap has over 25 years of experience in the financial services industry, of which over 15 years in the AML / CTF domain.

Catarina is Director, Regulatory & Compliance at Notabene, specializing in global crypto regulations and serves as a liaison between regulators and customers. With extensive policy involvement, including having co-chaired the CryptoUK Travel Rule working group and served on the EBA Technical Expert Group on CASPs and AML/CTF, she actively shapes the future of Travel Rule compliance. Her previous roles include Head of Legal at Fractal, focusing on AML regulatory solutions for crypto companies.

George is a global expert anti-financial crime at ACAMS and member of ACAMS' global SMEs team. He previously headed the Paris branch of a leading corporate intelligence consultancy and has strong credentials in corporate investigations and political risk analysis.

An ACAMS-certified global sanctions specialist (CGSS) and certified anti-money laundering specialist (CAMS), he has expertise in the geopolitics, security and economics of wider Europe and the former Soviet Union. George has written extensively on international affairs and has published to date two books and hundreds of articles.

Lora v. Ploetz is the Head of Division for Payment Institutions, Agents, and Virtual Currency Service Providers at BaFin, with over 20 years of experience in financial crime prevention. Responsibilities in her current role include authorization and licensing, as well as conducting on-site and off-site inspections of payment institutions, agents, and crypto-asset service providers. She has led proactive investigations, leveraged data analytics, and worked extensively with external high-level representatives. Lora is the co-chair of the FATF RTMG project on Professional Money Laundering and Underground Banking and is a founding member of the Anti-Financial Crime Alliance (AFCA) in Germany. She previously served as Head of the Global Financial Crime Unit at Commerzbank AG and held key compliance and legal roles at Western Union and UniCredit. Lora holds a Master of Law degree from Kliment Ohridsky and a Master of Finance from Goethe University Frankfurt.

Justine draws on a diverse global career, working across government, regulatory, private sector, and international organisations. As an expert on sanctions, counterterrorism, and financial crime she has held specialist positions within the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, HM Treasury, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (Central Asia), the British Bankers’ Association, and UK Finance. In addition, Justine was formerly part of the UK delegation to the Financial Action Task Force, chaired the European Banking Federation’s Sanctions Expert Group, co-chaired the UK Joint Money Laundering Intelligence Taskforce’s counterterrorist financing group and served as an International Monetary Fund advisor to Nigeria. She has acted as an independent Syria sanctions-humanitarian expert to the United Nations, and previously served as a national expert on the financing of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)/counter proliferation financing matters. 
 
In her role within ACAMS, the world’s leading membership organization with a presence in over 180 jurisdictions, Justine oversees the subject-matter-expert division. A regular contributor to media publications covering financial-crime issues, she has addressed UN expert groupings, given evidence to parliamentary hearings, and authored numerous publications. Justine also holds a Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews and an M.Sc. from the University of Edinburgh.

I have been working in Danske Bank for the last 20+ years. Over that period of time I have been involved in building and developing Group Internal Audit function in terms of methodology, tools and approach towards auditing financial crime topics. Before moving the 2^nd line role, between 2019-2023, the focus has been on providing assurance on the effectiveness of the remediation efforts taken by the Group. 

Since July 2023 I am heading the 2^nd line of defense as Head of Financial Crime Compliance for Danske Bank Group.