King's College London

From 17^th -19^th September 2019, in Panama City, King’s College London (KCL) conducted a training course on countering the financing of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) proliferation to an audience of 16 national policymakers from Panama.

This course came in the context of GAFILAT Mutual Evaluation Report and the subsequent greylisting of Panama by FATF. The active participation from the Panamanian government demonstrated its interests in counter-proliferation finance issues.

Participants came from a broad range of government agencies including, the Public Security Ministry, the Foreign Affairs Ministry and private-sector regulators. The national financial intelligence unit (UAF) actively participated in the course, and the Ministry of Commerce was also represented.

The course focused on both sanctions implementation and export control measures. It included eleven modules for a total of 350+ slides, all translated into Spanish. The training was a mix of taught sections, high-level self-reflexive discussions, tabletop case studies and online quizzes to monitor participants progress.

This curriculum development project is funded by the Export Control and Border Security (EXBS) Program at the U.S. Department of State and is led by Dr Ian Stewart and Mr Jean-Annet de Saint Rapt at KCL’s Project Alpha, as well as the Hon. Sue E. Eckert and Mr Leonard S. Spector.

Dr. Stewart is the Director of Project Alpha at King’s College London; he is a specialist on issues related to export controls, sanctions, and non-proliferation more generally. Dr Stewart has been the principal investigator on multiple grants related to non-proliferation and export controls for more than eight years.

Mr de Saint Rapt is the theme lead on proliferation finance at Project Alpha where his research focuses on the financing of WMD proliferation issues.

Project Alpha is a leading academic research centre focused on a broad range of proliferation issues, including CPF. Project Alpha has previously organized a number of CPF meetings and conducted a study into the typologies of proliferation finance, which was reflected in the last Financial Action Task Force (FATF) guidance on counter-proliferation financing.

KCL is working with a consortium of U.S. and EU nongovernmental organisations, including the DC-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) and the Center for New American Security (CNAS), to develop this curriculum.