We are looking for experts with extensive experience and knowledge in the following:

Serious Organised Crime 
 

General 

Knowledge and understanding of:  

 

• a theoretical (academic and/or practitioner-level) understanding of the causes, drivers and enablers of transnational serious and organised crime as well as structure and operation of key SOC markets which impact UK interests. 
• the international security and justice architecture (such as the UN, EU, Interpol, and the role of NGOs/civil society) as it applies to countering organised crime.  
• lead UK Government departments particularly NCA/HO/FCDO, with respect to policy, programmes, or operational delivery. 
• The impact of SOC on other key policy areas, e.g.  development, conflict, democratic governance, violent extremism, and state threats. 

Essential

• what works and doesn’t work with respect to countering organised crime. 
• strategic approaches to organised crime reform, including cross-sectoral linkages, and the role of intelligence actors in combatting organised crime. 
• community engagement and the role of local actors (including civil society);  
• UK and international national security architecture.  
• linkages between the formal/state and informal/non-state security and justice actors. 
• partnering/international cooperation on combatting organised crime whether bilaterally or through multilateral engagement. 
• approaches to tackling SOC in contexts where levels of grand corruption are high and SOC actors are politically integrated. 
   

Desirable

• an understanding of the linkages between SOC and violent extremism/terrorism activity in FCAS.  
• an understanding of state threat activity and its implication for SOC in FCAS.  
• Understanding of conflict sensitivity and its necessary application in FCAS.  
• Understanding of the UK’s serious Organised Crime Strategy and application of prevent, pursue, protect, prepare responses to SOC.  

Technical 

Knowledge and practical experience of organised crime programmes and operations in FCAS, including some of the following:  

• working in partnership with the host government and internal/local community actors to address security and organised crime threats. 
• experience of developing strategic approaches to counter organised crime (ideally including transnational organised threats), including conducting strategic analysis.  
• strengthening national crime-reduction architecture, developing processes for assessment and review of security threats, and improving the capacity to respond to them. 
• designing and implementing community engagement programmes, strengthening community understanding and collaboration.  
• preventing corruption of agencies engaged in preventing criminal activity in-order to support efforts to address issues such as illicit trafficking in arms and other commodities.
• facilitating and strengthening regional and international arrangements for security cooperation and confidence building. 

Programming

Knowledge and experience of organised crime programmes including those in FCAS, including some of the following:  

 

• analysis of state and non-state criminal justice systems, political and institutional dynamics, and assessment of their implications for prevention of crime programmes.  
• assessment and analysis of the context upon which organised crime programmes will be based, including history of the region with any inter-state or local conflicts, social, economic, and cultural factors, political and institutional dynamics, and assessment of their implications for security programmes.  
• scoping, design, and development of organised crime programmes and ‘soft’ security interventions; and 
• monitoring and evaluation of organised crime programmes, including risk management and programme reviews. 

Illicit Finance

General 

A strong academic or practitioner-level understanding of:

• Anti-Money Laundering (AML), illicit finance (IF) and/or terrorist financing (TF). Policy legislative, regulatory, intelligence or enforcement tools to identify, understand and respond to illicit finance, and the different ways that these can be applied or strengthened in a range of country contexts (e.g. developing countries, financial centres, small island states).
• The causes and effects of IF and its transnational and multi-sectoral nature. This includes the impact of IF on other key policy areas, e.g.  development, conflict, democratic governance, violent extremism, and state threats.

 

Essential

• Expertise and experience providing strategic and/or technical advice to HMG or partner Governments on IF, AML or TF.
• Experience of conducting scoping within the field of IF, AML, TF and/or asset recovery and return, and designing and delivering strategies and programmes that are realistic and tailored to the local context.
• AML, TF and/or counter-IF standards, procedures and practices, with respect to policy, regulation, legislation, and enforcement. This includes upstream approaches to understanding and addressing weaknesses in financial and non-financial systems that enable IF. It also includes sanctions designations and tools to detect, disrupt, freeze and return assets.  
• An understanding of the international architecture as it pertains to countering IF and TF (e.g., Financial Action Task Force mutual evaluations and monitoring, UNCAC, OECD, G7). 
• An understanding of the role of UK Government departments or law enforcement particularly FCDO / HMT / HO / NCA / NECC / HMRC / MPS with respect to policy, programmes, or operational delivery in the field of IF or TF.

 

Desirable

• An understanding of the overlap between IF, terrorist finance and threat finance, including how strategic and tactical responses to IF can support counter violent extremism/terrorism activity or state threat objectives in FCAS. 
• An understanding of state threats and how counter-IF work can address these threats .
• An understanding of the multifaceted relationship between corruption and IF, including the role of counter-IF efforts in reducing transnational corruption.
• An understanding of the political economy of IF and how to apply this in a range of different contexts when designing programmes and strategies.
• An understanding of conflict sensitivity and its necessary application in FCAS.

 

Technical

Knowledge and practical experience of IF, TF and/or organised crime programmes in fragile and conflict affected states (FCAS), including some of the following:

• Strengthening the UK’s international response to IF, including working with partner countries to build political will, capacity and institutional resilience.
• Experience of conducting strategic analysis and assessment on IF, including the political and technical factors that enable and cause IF in different country contexts.
• Working in partnership with host governments, regulatory bodies, the private sector, internal/local community actors, civil society, media, regional and global networks, and international partners to address IF threats and to design programmes that seek to counter IF and TF, including supporting efforts to address related complex issues (such as corruption and capital flight). 
• Experience of investigating IF or TF and understanding the challenges of bringing such cases to court as part of a criminal or civil judicial process. 
• Experience conducting or advising on the freezing, seizure, and confiscation of criminal or civil assets.
• Experience working on asset recovery and return.
• Working with private sector partners (such as the financial sector) to support financial integrity and advance AML, counter IF or counter TF efforts including understanding risk-based approaches and the role and consequences of de-risking. financial compliance and transparency processes (such as KYC, due diligence and suspicious transactions monitoring and reporting procedures).
• The role of designated non-financial bodies and professions in both facilitating and countering IF and TF, including effective approaches to regulation, supervision and compliance.
• Approaches to understanding high risk sectors in different contexts, and developing strategies and approaches that address weaknesses in these sectors (e.g. gaming, casinos, real estate, hedge funds, law, insurance).
• Beneficial ownership, including strengthening beneficial ownership registers, publicly accessible registers of beneficial ownership, the beneficial ownership data standard, and risks of sanctions evasion via other beneficial owners.
• Regulation and supervision of high value assets and dealers (e.g. gold and precious metals)
• The role of the illicit gold trade in IF, money laundering and TF, and potential approaches to countering this.
• Assessing and addressing IF, money laundering and TF risks in virtual assets and cryptocurrency, informal financial systems like hawala and mobile money, and approaches to understanding and addressing IF, TF and money laundering risks, while avoiding unintended consequences especially for developing countries.

 

Programming and strategy development

Knowledge and experience of counter IF and terrorist finance programmes and strategies in FCAS, including some of the following: 

• Experience of conducting scoping within the field of countering illicit finance, anti-corruption, TF and/or asset recovery, using both technical and political understanding to understand why IF persists in that context, the vulnerabilities that enable it, and providing realistic and context-specific recommendations for strategy and programming.
• Analysis of national and regional IF/TF vulnerabilities that could be targeted as part of a broader disruption or intervention response. 
• Understanding the interplay between IF, state threats and serious organised crime, or IF and terrorist financing and assessing the implications for programme implementation. 
• Understanding different donors and multilateral organisations’ approaches to IF (e.g. US, European Union, UNODC, African Development Bank, IMF, World Bank, African Union) and analysing where UK engagement can add value in different contexts.
• Analysing the effectiveness of current domestic and international levers to counter IF and identifying gaps and improvements.
• Experience of working with regional experts to identify inter-state or local conflicts or political or cultural aspects that may influence/impact on activity, factoring in current HMG priorities.
• Ability to understand potential unintended consequences of counter-IF programmes and strategies and provide advice to mitigate these.
• Monitoring and evaluation of IF programmes, including risk management and programme reviews.

If you have any questions, please contact CSG@fcdo.gov.uk