John Zdanowicz, Florida International Bankers Association (FIBA) Chair and professor, Department of Finance and Real Estate, College of Business Administration at Florida International University (FIU), spoke at the High Intensity Financial Crime Area (HIFCA) Financial Symposium on June 24, 2009. He presented on “Statistical Use of Trade Data to Identify Money Laundering.” Held at the New York Federal Reserve Bank in New York City, the event, titled Anti-Money Laundering & Fraud: New Landscapes,” drew more than 300 bankers and regulators.

Other sessions covered The New Fraud Landscape: TARP/TALF and Related Programs; Money Laundering in the Securities Industry: Hedge Funds; Trade Based Money Laundering: Trade Transparency; Trade Based Money Laundering: China; and Trade Based Money Laundering: Southwest Asia.

For almost twenty years, Zdanowicz has worked with monthly data the federal government uses to calculate the balance of trade to uncover anomalies. A tool he created, the International Price Profiling System, makes it easy to examine the pricing structures of more than six million possible combinations of products and countries.