What do people read on Duhaime’s Financial Crime site?Â
Do you ever wonder what banks, law enforcement agencies and government agencies around the world are most interested in when it comes to financial crime (money laundering and counter-terrorist financing)?
Duhaime”s AML Law is quite widely read around the world. Every bank, financial institution, government agency, intelligence agency and other companies regularly read our articles and the most popular topics may surprise you. Here are some of our annual statistics for 2015:
Most popular story –> the story we wrote comparing how Chinese foreign nationals who move funds to Vancouver use a well-known money laundering technique called smurfing, which is similar to drug gangs. That article spawned numerous articles in the international media and brought the term “smurfing” out from use as a money laundering term into general use in the media.
2nd most popular story –> our story on HR158 involving the new US Visa Waiver Program Amendment restricting access to the US for foreign nationals or visitors who were in Iran, Iraq, Syria or Sudan. This story, which spawned a similar article in Quartz, resulted in humanitarian aid agencies and journalists taking up the issue of HR158 and had an impact in the Middle East, including in Iran.
3rd most popular story –> Our story on how China is hunting down assets and money launderers in Vancouver.
4th most popular story –> Our next most popular story was on the “Twitter Terrorist” and how ISIS engages social media to lure people to the caliphate, as well as a showcase of how ISIS uses social media. The story spawned numerous conference topics and further media attention to the story of how ISIS was using Twitter for terrorism.
Most popular search term –> The most popular search term on the site in 2015 was “HSBC” and the second was the author, Christine Duhaime. Next in line was “money and crime” followed by “what is terrorist financing?” In previous years, “money laundering” was the most searched term but it has dropped down the list. We had over 1,500 search terms entered in 2015.
Most visitors came from –> Canada, then the US, UK, India, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, Germany, Italy, France and then, surprisingly,  Iran. Most people from Iran visited us to read the story on HR158 as it relates to Iranians. Not surprisingly, the most read story in the US was also about HR158 but in Canada, the most popular story was about how Chinese foreign nationals move money to Vancouver by smurfing. Visitors from the UK came mostly to read about Iran and HR158. Russians who visited our site almost all went to learn about terrorist financing whereas people from China all went to read about money laundering.
Demographics –> Most of our readers were male between the ages of 25-34. The banks with the most visits were Bank of America, Bank of Montreal, TD Bank, Royal Bank, followed by global US banks. In terms of law enforcement agencies, American law enforcement visited our site more than any other country and they read mostly about ISIS.