Turning Compliance Theatre into Real Control
Value Delivered
- Confident product decisions grounded in regulatory insight
- Stronger first-line product risk ownership
- Evidence-based roadmaps and prioritisation
- Sharper positioning and go-to-market execution
- Faster delivery of commercially viable solutions
- Senior product and risk judgement at critical moments
I am also the co-author of Trade-Based Money Laundering Compliance and the Law and a recognised voice in economic crime prevention and compliance technology. My approach is practical, commercially astute and designed to help organisations make better decisions faster.
Category: TBML Blogs
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The Padlocked Room: Inside the Wholesale Market for Criminal Cash
“A man who can move a tonne of cocaine can move a tonne of dollars.” Opinion of a wiretapped drug trafficker Written by Quentin Mugg & Dr. Mariola Marzouk On…
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The 24-Hour Window: Why Large-Scale Drug Traffickers Usually Hand Off TBML to Brokers
Written by Quentin Mugg & Mariola Marzouk On a Sunday night, a man takes delivery of a sports bag in a restaurant car park east of Paris, and drives off.…
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Hawala: Operational Reality vs Criminal Mythology
Hawala has spent three decades being flattened into a caricature: secretive, inherently criminal, impermeable, and somehow separate from legitimate commerce. That caricature is intellectually lazy and operationally dangerous. It confuses…
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Who Gets Fired for Not Disrupting?
Disruption starts with risk, and that is precisely why so much of what passes for “innovation” in AML is not disruption at all but careful career management dressed in strategic…
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From SARs to Nowhere: Measuring the Wrong Things.
Measuring the effectiveness of anti‑money laundering (AML) has become a ritual in itself. We obsess over what can be easily counted – suspicious activity reports (SARs), number of staff, training…
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The AML Knowledge Trap: Why Learning from Scandals Isn’t Enough
“That’s just academic theory.” Few phrases in anti money laundering compliance shut down discussion faster. I have heard it often from capable, committed professionals working on the front lines with…
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The Death of Strategic Product Management in Anti Money Laundering
The dominant language in today’s Anti Money Laundering (AML) landscape is the language of quiet surrender. It sounds like pragmatism and data fluency. Give me variables, ratios, network metrics and…
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Why A Widow’s First ATM Card Matters More Than Your Next RegTech Tool
Banking is a gateway to dignity, agency, and social membership, and withdrawing that gateway through de‑risking becomes a quiet machinery of humiliation and exclusion. Access to an account signals that…
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Laundering Souls While Laundering Money
I travelled to Egypt with Coptic Orphans on an eight-day board retreat, moving from the polished offices of Cairo to the dust of Upper Egypt’s villages, and what I witnessed…
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Free TBML Learning App
Built from Research You Won’t Find Anywhere Else. Most anti-money laundering training is recycled compliance theater: generic red flags, FATF talking points, and checkbox mentality. This app is different. It’s built…
My Book
Reviews:
A stimulating, critical examination of TBML and how it is combatted (or not). The authors cogently argue that the true danger of TBML is not its invisibility, but our belief that rigorous compliance frameworks equal control, when in fact, the illusion of control allows illicit finance to flourish. – Michael Levi, Cardiff University, UK
TBML is arguably the largest and most consequential money laundering methodology today, yet simultaneously the least understood, recognized, and enforced. This timely and valuable book provides fresh insights. I applaud its focus on how both policymakers and practitioners often prioritize symbolic responses over meaningful and substantive countermeasures. – John Cassara, former U.S. Treasury Special Agent (retired); Author of Trade-Based Money Laundering: The Next Frontier in International Money Laundering Enforcement
Contact: mariola.marzouk@gmail.com
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