- Horizon 2020 has awarded the TRACE consortium €7 million to fight money laundering by tracking illicit and suspicious money flows
- Aston University is developing an AI-enabled reasoning mechanism for mapping suspicious transactions for law enforcement agencies (LEAs)
- The project, which involves 17 partners including European national crime agencies and police authorities, will run until 2024
A project involving Aston University which aims to combat money laundering by tracking illicit and suspicious money flows has been awarded €7 million in research funding.
Horizon 2020, the EU funding programme for research and innovation, has made the award to the TRACE project to tackle the issue of the detection and tracing of hidden and illicit money flows from organised crime networks. This is especially difficult, as these networks operate on a global scale and use legal loopholes, as well as technical innovations, to protect their activities.
In TRACE, the partners will co-create with law enforcement agencies (LEAs), to develop highly innovative complex data management solutions alongside modular artificial intelligent analytics to enhance their capabilities in detecting, tracing, confiscating and recovering illicit money flows and generate court-proof e-evidence.
Professor Vladlena Benson, an industry-recognised expert in cybersecurity risk management and director of the newly formed Cyber Security Innovation (CSI) Centre at Aston Business School, is the principal investigator on the project.
The Centre brings together forward-thinking stakeholders from industry, government and academia to develop cyber security capability in both research and commercial solutions.
Professor Benson said:
“We are very excited about the project on illicit money flows as we will work with the law enforcement agencies across Europe. The cryptocurrency market and the dark web are notorious for money laundering transactions, and detection and prevention of criminal activities need to be automated through the latest emergent technologies.
“It is clear the new domains of cyber space yield new landscapes for criminal activities.
“The pandemic has undoubtedly changed the world and the digital ways in which we work and live are here to stay for the long run.”
The Centre is addressing the challenge by linking academics in information security, corporate governance, risk management, linguistics, criminology, intelligence, law and psychology with cyber security experts from industry and government.
- Notes to Editors
About Aston University
Founded in 1895 and a University since 1966, Aston is a long established university led by its three main beneficiaries – students, business and the professions, and our region and society. Aston University is located in Birmingham and at the heart of a vibrant city and the campus houses all the university’s academic, social and accommodation facilities for our students. Professor Alec Cameron is the Vice-Chancellor & Chief Executive.
Aston University was named University of the Year 2020 by The Guardian and the University’s full time MBA programme has been ranked in the top 100 in the world in the Economist MBA 2021 ranking. The Aston MBA has been ranked 12th in the UK and 85th in the world. The University also has TEF Gold status in the Teaching Excellence Framework.
For media inquiries in relation to this release, contact Sam Cook, Press and Communications Manager, on (+44)7446 910063 or email: s.cook2@aston.ac.uk
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