AFC in Practice: Risk Assessing Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs)

Gregory Mandoli is the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Deputy Attaché China. In this role, he oversees investigative teams in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Guangzhou and Beijing.  Prior to this, Greg supervised the Southern California High Intensity Financial Crime Area task force and developed the El Camino Real Community of Interest, both based in Los Angeles (2015-2019). Other assignments included the US Embassy in London (2010-2015), HSI’s Office of International Affairs in Washington DC (2007-2010) and the Office of Investigations in San Francisco (1998-2007). While in San Francisco, he participated in multi-year secondments to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) task force and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) where he focused on money laundering to the Middle East.

In 1991, Greg received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Economics with an emphasis in accounting from the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1994, Greg graduated from Golden Gate University School of Law with the recognition of a Public Interest Law Scholar. Before becoming a Special Agent, Greg practiced law as a deputy public defender in California where he handled felony matters involving homicide, Three Strikes, gangs and drug offenses. In 2006, Greg graduated from the Naval Postgraduate's Master of Arts program in Homeland Defense and Security where he authored an original theory thesis, The Sandbox Strategy, regarding the interoperability of federal law enforcement agencies. His related professional activities include eight years as an Army Reservist in the Judge Advocate General Corps (2000-2008) and current position as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland where he has designed and taught courses in the undergraduate and graduate programs since 2007. Greg is also CAMS certified.

Vanessa is currently an independent AFC Auditor and Risk Management Consultant with a global career spanning NYC (USA), Mumbai (India) and more recently Vancouver (Canada). Vanessa’s forte lies in helping organizations to ethically interpret regulation, design risk-based AFC programs and test these programs to enable constant evolution in combating financial crime and other threats. Her current area of focus is driving AI penetration in AFC threat assessment, investigation, monitoring  and reporting. Prior to starting her own consultancy, she worked as a Director with Morgan Stanley in their Global Financial Crimes Team, and has held various roles with Barclays, EY, ONGC, A.P. Moller Maersk Group and BCI.

Vanessa is the first woman in India to achieve the CAMS-Audit credential from ACAMS and holds the CAMS-Risk Management credential too. In 2021, she delivered a webinar on ‘Algorithmic Bias and its impact on Financial Inclusion’. She is a graduate of the Compliance Career Academy at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School. Her CAMS-Audit whitepaper titled ‘Eyes Wide Shut: Understanding Unconscious Bias in AML Audits’ discusses how auditors and organizations can use research on biases to augment automated solutions and mitigate risks in the different stages of an AML audit to guard against perpetuation of those biases.

In 2014, Vanessa received the Mountbatten-Barclays Graduate Trainee Scholarship. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and an MBA (Technology Management) from NMIMS University, Mumbai.