Dr. David Chaikin is an academic teaching and researching banking law and international financial crime at the University of Sydney Business School. David is a practising lawyer specialising in transnational litigation & offshore financial services law. He has held appointments as Senior Assistant Secretary & Head of the International Criminal Law Enforcement and Security Branch in the Australian Attorney-General’s Department, & Senior Fraud Officer of the London-based diplomatic body, the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Practice-based research has included: lead co-consultant on the FATF/APG project on money laundering & corruption, and principal consultant on the Financial Services Council project on reforming trust law to improve Australia’s competitiveness. He was a member of the Australian Treasury Department’s Expert Advisory Panel on Whistleblower Protection, and the United Nations Drug Commission’s Expert Committee on Forfeiture of Illicit Assets.

Extensive international investigatory experience in asset tracing/recovery, fraud, and financial sanctions. In one of his more celebrated engagements David spent seven years assisting the Philippine Government in tracing and recovering the illicit assets of President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos.

Author and editor of eight books & over 100 papers on subjects including corruption and money laundering; financial crime risks and the professions; corporate and trust structures: legal and illegal dimensions; cybersecurity risk in the financial services industry; beneficial ownership disclosure regulation of private companies; China’s approach to combating informal international capital flows; and digital investigations of network evidence.

Member of the Australian Academy of Forensic Science and a Fellow of the British Institute of Professional Investigators. He has a PhD in law from the University of Cambridge, a Master of Laws from Yale Law School, and a Bachelor of Laws/Bachelor of Commerce (Finance, Accounting and Systems) (with merit) from the University of New South Wales.