Andrew Mackay is an independent AML/CFT compliance consultant currently engaged in the Caribbean, Malta and other international financial centres. Previously, Mackay was the head of Financial Crime Threat Mitigation for HSBC in Malta. This role involved identifying, understanding and mitigating the financial crime risks in Malta and transnationally through investigations, analytics and intelligence.
Mackay enjoyed a career in the Royal Navy, where his early deployments included the Caribbean for hurricane relief and counter-narcotics operations, as well as global deployments to the Middle East and the Far East for defence engagement and security assurance operations. He undertook a number of operational deployments in various locations, including the Balkans in support of investigations on war criminal financial facilitation and support networks; Iraq to investigate Iraqi sanctions evasions and terrorist networks; and Afghanistan and Bahrain for maritime security operations, counter-narcotics, counter-piracy and counter-terrorist roles in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
He served in the Ministry of Defence in London and the Joint Forces Command (South) for NATO in Italy, formerly known as Allied Forces Southern Region (AFSOUTH). Mackay also spent four years as a liaison officer in Washington D.C., where his job included geopolitical analysis, counter-terrorism, technology and innovation design and acquisition, as well as specialising in threat finance (a term for hybrid AML/CFT warfare) in relation to homeland security threats with the Department of Defence.
Mackay is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) and Certified Cryptocurrency Investigator (CCI). He is co-chair of the ACAMS Malta Chapter and a former member of the ACAMS U.S. Capital Chapter in Washington D.C. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Queen Mary University of London and a master’s degree with distinction in intelligence and international security from King’s College London. Following a master’s level module at the UN University for Peace, his current academic interests include the crime-terror nexus in relation to illicit finance, moving from following the money to getting ahead of the money through predictive intelligence and financial intelligence, as a new intelligence discipline.
