Inside CVC: Hayley van Loon on the Illegal Empire, Supply Chain Crime, and Corporate Accountability

Hayley van Loon is the CEO of Crime Stoppers International and spent the first eight years of her career in counterterrorism operations in Australia. She joins Inside CVC to explain why criminal networks are not a parallel economy. They run directly through yours.

In this conversation, Hayley walks Steve and Philipp through what Crime Stoppers calls the Illegal Empire: a $4 trillion ecosystem where counterfeit goods, human trafficking, illicit tobacco, firearms and scam compounds share the same financial trails, the same laundering systems and the same physical logistics. Follow one tip far enough, she says, and you don't find a guy. You find a supplier, a bank and an investor.

The conversation goes deeper into where corporate exposure actually lives. Not in the company itself, but four tiers upstream, in a supplier no one has ever laid eyes on. Hayley makes the case that "we don't see it" and "it isn't there" are not the same thing, and explains why criminal networks are adapting to capital markets, crypto and AI faster than corporations and governments can respond.

She also addresses what boards should be asking, why not knowing stops being a defense the moment the question is put in front of you, and where public-private partnerships are the real edge in fighting financial crime.

If you sit on a board, run a supply chain or approve capital allocations, this episode will reframe what due diligence actually means.

Related Links:

• Learn About The Illegal Empire:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7k9_VMjb6U
• Crime Stoppers International: https://www.crimestoppersinternational.org/

Transcript

Welcome to Inside CVC, the podcast that brings together leaders in innovation and capital investment to explore the trends shaping the business of corporate venture capital. I'm your host, Steve Schmith, and together with Philipp Willigmann we're speaking to corporate investors, entrepreneurs and ecosystem builders. Driving the Future of Innovation inside CVC is brought to you by you Path Advisors, helping corporations and startups unlock sustainable growth through strategic partnerships. To learn more, visit u-path.com That's the letter u dash path dot com. And to catch up on all of our episodes, search inside CVC on your favorite podcast platform or visit uptodate dot com forward slash podcast. In this episode, we follow the money, and what defined at the end of the trail is not what most corporate leaders expect. Haley van Loon is the CEO of Crime Stoppers International. She spent the first eight years of her career in counterterrorism operations in Australia. Today, she runs an organization most people assume operates a tip line. What it actually does is map how the world's dirtiest money moves through the same supply chains, the same financial systems, and the same trade routes your business runs through every day. In this conversation, we discuss what Haley calls the illegal empire, a four trillion dollar criminal ecosystem where counterfeit goods, human trafficking, illicit tobacco all run through the same financial trails and the same supply chains as most legitimate organizations. We talk about why corporate exposure in the system almost never lives in the company itself. But for tiers upstream in the supplier, no one can ever lay their eyes on. We get into how criminal networks are adapting to crypto and AI faster than governments can respond. And we ask the question every board should be putting to their executive team. Where does our line of sight actually end? We pick up with Hayley explaining what Crime Stoppers International has become and why your business may already be part of a system you haven't looked hard enough to see.

I think people think we just run a phone number or an online reporting mechanism, but really what we're seeing globally is a map of how the world's dirtiest money moves. you follow one tip far enough and you don't find a guy, you find a supplier, a bank and an investor. the same networks move the counterfeit handbag, the illicit cigarettes and the trafficking victims. So we were seeing a picture that other people weren't necessarily seeing. And we call this the illegal empire. my job used to be just helping you report a crime anonymously. Now it's evolved into telling you that you might be funding one. So educating people on where they fit into this criminal ecosystem. It's so interesting. You use the word investor in this context, right? Generally something that is around growth and good things, right? And to hear that word in this context is a little bit jarring. It can be for some people, but every single person plays a role really in this ecosystem from the from the everyday person buying things for their household, right through to investors investing in different businesses and marketplaces. when we met in, um, in Davos you were pointing out to one of the handbags in the audience and explaining like, I hope this one is not a fake one and saying like, you know, if it would be bought on Fifth Avenue in New York City, you know, not in one of the fancy shops, but on the street. You know, it may, you know, may fund crime. It reminded me of this movie, The Beekeeper. And I was like, what is she talking about? Right. And then afterwards I saw the movie and I said, ah, now I'm getting it. Can you maybe just share with our audience a bit about how does this, you know, supply chain work, if I may use the word supply chain, Yeah. I'm so glad you brought up the movie beekeeper, because I think it really is such a great movie. And if only we could take out the criminals in the same way he does. But that's that's not possible. so what we see is, and the thing that you're referring to is a campaign we ran the year before last called the Illegal Empire, where we had a case where there's a counterfeit handbag that's been purchased by a consumer, and they're really excited. They've paid twenty pounds for this counterfeit handbag with a really nice brand name on it, and they're going to show it off to their friends. And you know, you think, well, twenty dollars. First of all, how could anybody produce anything for twenty dollars? I mean, just the logistics alone, the materials, etc.. It's not really possible. So in the first instance, asking consumers, um, do you really think it's possible that anyone could make this for twenty dollars and make a profit? But then as we move down that, that ecosystem, through that supply chain, we look at who made the handbag. It's a little girl in Bangladesh or the Philippines, or somewhere chained to a sewing machine for sixteen hours a day, paid maybe a small amount or not at all. Um, and then who profits from that? The gun runner. The gun runner that's selling firearms to a terror cell in the Philippines, for example. And then where does that money kind of flow? Well, we see it flowing into the illicit tobacco space, where it's using the same logistics routes to move through the different countries across the world. And then we see it connected to sexual slavery. So, you know, young girls as young as nine being sold as sex slaves across the across the world and women and men even, but just disproportionately, women and children are affected more greatly in this ecosystem and exploited more broadly across the ecosystem. So when I start telling people about the interconnectedness of all these different crime, what I call verticals, they're not separate verticals. They're not just cybercrime, as you mentioned, the scam farms or, you know, the, the laptop farmers, etc.. It's not just narcotics. It's not just human trafficking. It's not just, you know, child sex abuse. All these things are sharing the same financial trails, the same laundering systems, and the same like physical logistical routes to move people, drugs, money, etc. and so it's very important to me that people understand that they are feeding into this system by, by purchasing those items. And likewise, um, you know, the, the companies that you're buying and things, do you actually know what's at the end of, of that? Who's your supplier? Supplier, I think is really important to ask that question as well. This is a four trillion dollar industry. Those are numbers that pit the criminals that you're just that you're describing as in some ways peers from, from a financial level to everyday investors. talk to me about why I should be thinking about this, Well, I think it's really important that we think about the scale of that number, right? And that's just what we can see. So remember, there's a whole lot purposefully that we cannot see. So all the serious estimates land around three to four percent of global GDP north of four trillion dollars. And we size the piece that we look at alone at four point two trillion. So no one can be precise because of the way that it's hidden. Um, but I think if we look at an economy that size, it doesn't sit in a corner. It survives by running through the same trade, trade and finances that everyone else is running through. So saying that as an investor, you have no exposure. That's not a finding. It means you haven't looked. You know, something so large has to run through our systems. And I think that's why it's important that, um, given the scale of it, given the control that you have when you have such scale that you know, anyone that's a peer in that, in that ecosystem has to be seeing it going through the same systems that they're using and that they're investing in. So for me, it's, it's, it's a no brainer that we look a little harder. So who is watching that? Who is protecting that infrastructure? Yeah. So the criminals protect it better than most corporations protect their crown jewels. Uh, because to them really? Yeah. I mean, the drugs, the counterfeits, the trafficking, those are all interchangeable. But the thing they can't afford to lose is the machinery that moves it and cleans the money. So they ring, fence it and the layers of shell companies. So no single entity ties back to one single person. They're professional enablers, lawyers, accountants, um, company formation agents, and they give it a legitimate face. And the jurisdictions that these places are created in are chosen precisely because they won't answer the phone and they keep it modular. So take down one node and the network just reroutes around it because no single piece holds the whole thing together. They've essentially built redundancy into crime, and we could learn a few things from them around, you know, business resilience really, because they adapt so quickly compared to how all of us adapt in the normal ecosystem. absolutely fascinating. Hayley, can you give an example of a, of a company or an investor who believes they don't have an exposure, but why they might be wrong? Yeah. So let's picture a clean looking business, consumer goods, logistics, audited books, good people. Um, and they'll swear it has nothing to do with them. And as you've experienced hearing from me, people are like, wow, I had no idea. I really had no idea. And that comes the education piece. The exposure is almost never in the company itself. It's four tiers upstream in a supplier. No one has ever laid the actual eyes on in a channel that quietly touches gray market goods. And remember, what's on the other end of the chain is a trafficking victim chained to a sewing machine, like I mentioned before. And they sit on the same supply chain as that handbag. And these businesses, these investors, these companies are saying we don't see it and it isn't there, which are not the same things, right? It's just we haven't looked hard enough at at where our ultimate destination is and our ultimate suppliers. So I think it's very, very common for just your regular business infrastructures to be part of this ecosystem with having without having looked really. And if we kind of take a step back and you think about, you know, a normal corporation, a family business, wherever it might be in the world. How can they actually, I mean, if, you know, obviously if they don't look, they don't know. But I mean, what, what, what are some of the things they should be looking out for in their supply chains, um, to see if there is any exposure, if there's anybody in their ecosystem who may actually be working. Yeah. With, with the, the gray market or the black market, if you will. Yeah. I think one thing that I always would like to note, especially in the current fiscal environment, is looking for these things at right down at the grassroots level is incredibly challenging for small to medium businesses. Okay. So they are already struggling with the increased cost of doing business. And so I think a lot of this responsibility lie kind of at the, at the higher level, you know, at the, at the the supply chain that's actually got the bigger buying power. So doing their due diligence, actually, when you purchase a factory that's making and manufacturing part of a new, um, enterprise that you're entering into or what it might, whatever it might be in the past, uh, not in this role, but in a previous life, I worked for a private, um, security intelligence firm and we do due diligence for investors when they were going to purchase businesses, whatever that might be. And that's normal, right? But for us, part of that due diligence process meant putting boots on the ground in a place like Brazil, for example, uh, to look at a manufacturing facility to see has this manufacturing facility, uh, got a history of abuse? Does it have people in there that are in, in forced labor? Does it have people that are in poor conditions? Do they have, um, you know, a bad record of occupational health and safety? You know, what, what's it look like? I think a lot of investors don't want to go that far. A lot of businesses don't want to go that far and say, well, has anyone actually visited our factory in this country? And was it just a short site visit where they knew that the global vice president was visiting? So they cleaned everything up? We need proper due diligence done through that supply chain to ensure that we're not part of the problem. I don't know, I just I, I hear the story and I'm, I don't, I don't, I don't have a question. I'm just reacting to, to sort of the insights and you're bringing here that says, you know, if, if. To me, it's surprising to hear that because I would think going into it as a, as a, I would give a, I would give a bit of business the benefit of the doubt. Right. You know, if I was an investor and it was stood up and it had all the credentials, maybe they're not looking. You're they're clearly not looking hard enough is, as you know, is what you're describing. But, you know, I'm sort of my mind is blown away that this if I'm if I'm hearing correctly what you're saying and sort of understand what you've been speaking about, this is a huge issue. And it's not one of these things that is tucked away in the corner. I mean, this affects a lot of people that, you know, I, you know, I don't know if they're they're aware of it or they they see it. To your point, again, I don't have a question here. To me, I'm just sitting here going, why the heck don't people realize this when they're looking at at quarterly statements, when they're looking at potential investment? I mean, why why isn't this is my business as much as it has a stable supply chain as much as it doing good for the environment, as much of those, you know, very critical questions that I think investors often ask themselves. Does this business align with the values of companies I want to invest in, among others? It just seems interesting to me that this is not among the top question that perhaps investors don't ask themselves. I don't know. It's interesting. I think part of the issue is once you see something, you're forced to do something about it, Right? And it's a big problem. And I'm not trying to downplay and say, you know, well, everybody's in the wrong and, you know, should be doing all these things. I totally understand this isn't people's world. If this is not a world that's touched you in any way, we can't expect everyone to know that it is a problem. And that is part of what we're doing now at Crime Stoppers International. It's educating people so that they do understand that this is a problem, and they then can make a decision themselves as to how they handle it. But it is a complex problem. Can you talk a little bit more about how you are educating folks, uh, on this issue? Yeah. So we, um, go around speaking a lot at a lot of different events in different kind of, um, industries. But like I mentioned earlier, we launched a campaign two years ago now called Stop the Illegal Empire. And it was a short video that was made, um, by the London advertising agency. And it demonstrated that supply chain that I spoke about. So it starts with the handbag and ends with a little girl who just wants to go home, and a masked man who rips a head off a bunny. Um, and what we did is we sent it out to influencers in parts of Europe. Um, when they ordered a, um, a fake handbag and they did the unboxing and found the little bunny's head. And then the video would play so that they could see. So this was aimed more at consumers really than, than business, you know, owners, but um, really kind of get getting to the grass roots. If there's no buyers for a product, then the crime kind of, you know, decreases in that space. But all we're seeing now is a considerable and ongoing and persistent increase in things like counterfeit goods. As you know, the crisis around the world kind of continues to unravel. Cost of living increases. Therefore, people are more likely to buy counterfeit goods, counterfeit drugs, um, you know, and that just adds fuel to the criminal, um, ecosystem, unfortunately, in all aspects gun running, terrorism, child sex abuse and exploitation rings. So, um, you know, it's, it's up to us to if no one else is telling you, it's up to us to do our best to let everyone know, really I feel anyway, and I imagine the reaction, the feedback has been, uh, you know, quite powerful. It was a very powerful video. I watched it myself. Um, overall, how's what's feedback been overall to the campaign? Um, are you seeing things change? Are you, you know, what are you seeing as a result of the campaign? You know, it's been effective in the sense that everyone that's seen it feels it, it's visceral, um, as you've probably experienced. Um, but I don't think from a, from the standpoint in which we're talking in this conversation, I don't think it's impacting, um, you know, decision makers at the top of business. It certainly impacted consumers and the amount of people that come up to me and say, oh, hey, Hayley, I watched that video. I'm never buying a fake again. you've. And there was this running joke that I've ruined a lot of people's lives because they want to wear fake. And now they can't because I've told them the reality and they just had no idea. And like I said, I don't it's not. There's no part of me that is judging anybody for these decisions, right? If you don't know, you don't know. But once you do know, you can't buy it anymore, right? Or you can. And that's a whole nother conversation. But, um, yeah, lots of people certainly give us the feedback that they really just didn't know about the interconnectedness of it. We talk about something that, you know, everyone has their different triggers. And for me, one that gets people is the links to terrorism because everyone, you know, has experienced some kind of very strong either connection or reaction to a terrorist attack that's happened in the last twenty years. Um, you know, even just last December in Australia, there was the attack at Bondi Beach. Um, and those individuals were linked to a terror cell in the Philippines where they received their training. Now, we've seen in the past the same terror cell in the Philippines have gained funding for their firearms from the sale of illicit tobacco. And so when I say to people here, I mean, Australia has a booming illicit tobacco trade. Huge. I mean, it outstrips the legitimate supply chain considerably. Um, and so when we look at that problem here, there were firebombings here last year. Um, you know, a synagogue was synagogue was bombed, Israeli restaurants, a whole lot of tobacconists, um, in Melbourne, Australia, you know, this, this criminal ecosystem, people are buying the illicit, you know, the fake cigarettes and therefore fueling this economy that continues to deteriorate the fabric of our society. So, you know, it's, it's, um, been a strong reaction from people. But yet again, if they don't feel and understand the connection, it can be very hard to change people's patterns and decisions. Um, you know, so we can, all we can do is keep trying, right? I mean, I don't want to, you know, draw a connection to, to climate change. You know, it sounds like if people have a exposure to climate change, then they finally start to understand, um, what's really happening. And it makes sense to, you know, change their behavior. Um, but, but with, you know, with crime and criminal networks, I wonder with the speed of AI, the speed of, you know, what's going, what's happening online and cyber crime and, you know, things in the, you know, on the darknet. Can you talk a bit about like what threats are happening there or what. Or what I can say business models, you know, the, the crime networks are actually working on because I would assume there's a lot of things happening, which yeah, we don't even, you know, the normal person doesn't see and even corporations have a hard time finding out. Yeah. Look, there's a million things I could talk about in response to this answer, I think to this question. Sorry. I think the main thing is that the criminal networks are able to adapt and move faster than we are. Um, and it's not because they're smarter. It's because they've got no committees, you know, they don't have to ask for approval. They don't have to keep up with legislative, you know, changes and they can, they can kind of adapt around it. we talk we talk a lot about, physical, topics and physical crimes, but just given the speed of AI, the speed of what's happening around cyber I wonder like what is happening around all the digital, And can you share a little bit of what are typical crimes we have to look out for So you've really sparked something in my mind that, um, you know, I didn't think that we would be talking about on this podcast in particular, but something that I would like to raise, um, and it's impacting our young people in particular. sexual extortion is something that has evolved rapidly, especially across English speaking countries. So Australia, Canada, the US and the UK in particular, where these criminal gangs are operating online and they have groups they can join where they can download scripts to send to these young men in order to extort them for money, um, after they get them to send sexually explicit imagery to them. What this has led to is a is a spike in in teen suicide. it is relentless. And these criminal gangs are relentless. And often what we're seeing is between first contact of these criminal gangs that are operating online from places in Africa, and the individual taking their life can be as little as twelve hours. That's how aggressive this behavior is. So that's one aspect for me that I think it's very important that we are all aware of. Um, and that it is happening and that these pages where scripts can be downloaded, uh, publicly, you know, accessible, searchable and findable places that certain platforms are not taking down. Um, and so that's, that's one element. Um, obviously the scam farms in Southeast Asia, uh, people stuck in forced criminality, uh, you know, calling and you think, well, you know, I just, I, I just overcame it. The scammer didn't get me. That was clearly a scam, but often the person that was trying to scam you, if they don't meet their KPIs, they can be tortured or killed. And so, you know, yeah, you might have won and not been scammed, but there's someone stuck in forced criminality who was trafficked into a scam compound, and they're just trying to meet their KPIs to survive. Those that are able to escape those scam compounds are often find it very difficult to to function in society because they know that they've participated in this criminal ecosystem, not through any choice of their actual own. Um, we're also seeing, uh, a complete erosion of trust across the world. You can't trust anyone that calls you. Are they actually who they say they are? Particularly where, um, you know, those of us that have our voice available online, our face is available online. You know, AI, you know, all that augmentation, all of that, you know, deep fake, um, stuff makes it very hard for people to believe any email they receive, you know, any phone call or even videos they that they see. There's a lot of really funny videos out there of world leaders where they've, you know, changed the and it's them saying something else or rapping to something, but they look very real. And so there's just a complete erosion of trust in our society now that is coming out of all of this. Um, you know, the, the pace and the scale and the, and the developments in AI. Um, but on the reverse side of that, AI is also allowing us to fight a lot of crimes in ways that we hadn't before, streamline the way that we are able to, um, you know, investigate things and move through the systems, but remembering that it's a challenging space legislatively because legislation has to keep up with the way that we fight crime. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of angles to this and a lot of things to be looking for. And, um, you know, companies and families need to have robust understanding of what's out there, um, and what can be impacting them every day. And it shifts every single day. Haiti. One thing which which sparked me right now, uh, when we talked about, you know, people getting targeted online, uh, a couple of months back, I had the pleasure of being in a security briefing, uh, of a European country. Uh, and, um, the head of their security department was actually talking about the increasing amount of young teenagers, uh, being targeted by terror organizations, um, to essentially do things they would normally not do, uh, essentially plan small terror attacks. Um, and, uh, you know, go to the local supermarket and stab somebody, uh, completely out of the world thinks if you, for my understanding, but, uh, in this specific country, um, this, this, this organization was sharing that they tracked over thirty five of those are targeted approaches. And, uh, they were able to identify only twenty five of them. And the others actually happened. And one person nearly got killed by like a fourteen year old who took a knife and went into the supermarket and stabbed somebody. I mean, any, any kind of like reactions to that? Is that connected to, you know, some of the, you know, the work you're doing, the work you're seeing? Or are these more like just, you know, true terror organizations who are just trying to create more destabilization in the Western world? Yeah. Look, you've hit a raw nerve there. I'm not sure if you know, but I started out my career working in counterterrorism. Um, so I worked in that area for not. So the first eight years of my career was working in counterterrorism operations here in Australia. Um, and so back then, I mean, this is twenty years ago. Um, you know, we're, we're at the height of the war on terror and we were seeing young men being radicalized online. Um, you know, so that aspect of it is not new. What is new is that many of these individuals that you're talking about may not be radicalized, may not be, you know, reverting to Islam. They're just doing things for the cash, right? They're just being paid to, to carry out this one attack or whatever it might be, which is a change in, you know, the modus operandi of these groups. And, um, you know, in some instances, I would say it's not purely just a terrorist thing. It is a foreign interference issue. So some of these individuals, you know, it is legitimate, um, governments that, you know, one could argue whether they're terrorists or not, um, paying for these, for these attacks and exactly like you described to destabilize, you know, Western society and, and deteriorate, you know, the current kind of environment further. So, um, you know, young men in particular have always been a vulnerable part of the population, um, particularly when it comes to, um, you know, criminality and, and terrorism. And so, you know, I've always thought about, and there's lots of sociological studies and things that, that look at how do we intervene? Um, you know, at a point, what are the education systems we can put in place and how do we reach young men before criminal gangs reach them, before terrorist cells reach them? And as parents, like, what are we looking for? There's an entire another discussion, you know, to be had here. I could talk about this for hours because, you know, it's where a lot of our problems begin. Um, I think, you know, not only in the criminal, um, you know, terrorist space, but also when it comes to violence against women, you know, domestic violence, intimate partner, uh, there's all these things that unfortunately starts with teenage teenage boys. Um, you had talked about earlier around how fast these criminal networks are adapting how agile they were even mentioned, uh, a few lessons probably corporate could, could take from, from this as well. Are they taking a similar approach when it comes to the capital markets? Um, in terms of how fast they're adapting, how agile they are, perhaps even various investment instruments, Bitcoin now is sort of the, the, the unregulated frontier that is the prediction markets where I could imagine what you're describing could offer some opportunity as well. Are they are they adapting this quickly? And they were on the capital markets as they were, how they, you know, they react to infrastructure and so forth? Absolutely. They are. Um, and I think that it's, you know, if we look back at some of the, the things that we've spoken about previously, we're all built to be careful. They're built to be fast, right? And so you see the real difference there. Their entire edge is staying off everyone's radar. Using things like crypto, um, and other mechanisms that we kind of are cautious of. You can't really out govern that. Um, and the only thing we can really do is, is find ways to see it sooner. And in my opinion, that comes down to public private partnerships because the private sector, the banks, the financial institutions, the businesses are seeing things, uh, that the law enforcement agencies are not seeing. Uh, without going through considerable mechanisms to access certain, um, material and data, which is takes time. And so, you know, once we discover one particular way that they're doing something, they've already worked out that the good guys have worked it out. And so they've adapted and moved to a different mechanism, um, or found a way to hide the way they're doing things. And I think it would be remiss of us to think that it doesn't impact the capital market. It absolutely does. Um, there's just no way that it, that it can't, I think especially with the scale and the volume of money and products that we're talking about. You've talked about the importance of government. You've talked about governing speed of government. Out of curiosity, are there any examples? Is there an angle of this that tackles the issue without government gets them out of the way? Maybe government's role is less so than some of these public private partnerships you described. Yeah, I think, um, like I said, I think the public private partnerships allow more agility and better and easier access to data. Um, but we will always need law enforcement in the loop, right? Because they're the ones ultimately that will be able to make the arrest, um, and the take down and dismantle the financial flows of these organizations. But private industry can certainly slow things down. Uh, they can slow things down with their own internal mechanisms. We've seen really good examples of some of the financial institutions, um, being at the cutting edge of technology to prevent deep fake, um, entering their systems to ensure that, um, there's certain ways that people, customers in particular can determine if the call is actually coming from the bank. They've created things within their apps that allow you to verify that the number is from the bank and it's not a fraudster. And so I think also the, the way that, um, they are able to, uh, pay some of the best, you know, software engineers and financial crime fighters and things is certainly an edge that they have over governments that increasingly cannot keep up with the, the kind of the pay scales, I guess, of the Silicon Valley type, uh, industry. And so therefore, I think they have a duty to, um, you know, to the community to provide and continue to develop in those technology areas to protect us from, from these crimes in the corporate world. Private enterprise. You mentioned duty. When does not knowing or not asking tough questions sort of migrate into a failure of executive management or a board of directors, and maybe to throw in there in addition to that, I mean, we have these conversations of over decades, right? Child labor, you know, companies were selling garments or, you know, shirts leveraging child labor. You know, sometimes it's in the press. So just kind of curious to hear your thoughts on that. Um, I think not knowing is fair while something's genuinely unknowable, the moment it changes is the moment that the question's been put in front of you and you decide not to ask. I think that's the key point there. You know the point you're referring to there. We went through that period in the nineties where everything related to, I think it was Oxfam. And was it an ethical supply chain and were children being used in that supply chain and were people being paid? Um, and so we know about this. And so that's not really an excuse anymore. I think if we're not asking and choosing to stay in the dark, um, that's a decision we're, we're consciously making. I mean, I won't lecture a board on its legal duties. That's certainly not my lane. But for something like the illegal empire, a four trillion dollar system running through global supply chains, chains, it isn't it isn't a fringe risk for these businesses. Um, and regulators are starting to treat it in the same manner. So the danger is the day we say we didn't know, um, quietly turns into, we didn't want to know. And I think that that's what we're dealing with here. Because like I said before, if we ask the question and we find the problem, then we have to commit financially as well to the solution. And and we've got to look at the ROI, the bottom line. And that's what these places are focused on. What's their return on investment, what's their bottom line look like? And tackling these issues, um, decreases profit. Really. You just said something and I want to, I want to do a quick follow up here before, before Philip asks the next question. Big pharma, big tobacco, asbestos, double digit, million dollar, billion dollar fines, right. Pesticides, etc.. Do we see those sorts of penalties in this space? No, we don't know. Pretty simple answer. Hayley, if you think about, risk mitigation in this area and doing things to prevent, um, criminal organizations. Where should capital go? Where should you know, where should organizations invest? Is it about traceability? Is it, you know, identity management, financial intelligence? What are the real leverage points to prevent this? I think all of the above. So this whole illegal empire runs on one trick in my opinion. So it's moving money and goods across enough borders and no one can prove where it started. That's where that's their trick. So the thing that actually scares these networks is provenance. So prove where something came from. Prove who you're really dealing with. Map the network instead of chasing one lonely transaction. Um, where the returns are is your call. Um, I'm not here for that. But you asked where they're weakest. Um. Take away the dark. And the empire has nowhere to hide. Um, I often liken it to a tree. This system, this illegal empire is like a tree. And we've got the root system. We've got the trunk and we've got the branches. What we're dealing with in, in not only the corporate, you know, legal space, but the government space and financial crimes, etc., we're often just cutting off the branches at the surface and not dealing with the root problems right down in the root system of the tree, which is where we need to, you know, this, this, you know, infected tree that's, you know, basically destroying the fabric of our society needs to be completely removed. Um, and that's at the financial flows right down at the root system, not at the one single transaction, one hawala dealer or one person at this particular point in time. And so like I said, it's getting right down into turning off, turning the lights on essentially to bring them out of the dark. We talked about a bunch of different topics today and so many areas we could go so much deeper. But if if a C-suite executive or board member, you know, listen to this show, what would you hope they take away from from it. And what questions would they ask to their executive team in the next board meeting? Um, which will change the perspective of, of the organization on this topic around crime crime organizations? Yeah. I think the first question is, do we know where our supply chains come from? I think that's the first question. Second would be where does my visibility actually run out? You know, there's a lot of, um, understandably reliance on our teams to brief upwards to us. But ultimately the buck stops with you. And, you know, I think what am I assuming lives in that gap that where I'm not seeing things? Um, everyone can tell you what they own. Um, almost no one can tell you where their line of sight ends. So how far down the chain can you see? Um, and that blind edge just past where anyone is still looking. That's exactly where this system of the illegal empire lives. And so we need to, um, you know, increase our line of sight, um, make it harder for these criminals to operate within legitimate systems because it, it makes our systems illegitimate by allowing them to, to operate within our system. So I think the question is, am I doing as an executive, everything I can to ensure that our supply chain is as clean as it can be? Um, am I asking all the questions I need to ask in relation to the protection of vulnerable people? Um, and if the answer is yes, great. Will you always be able to cover everything? No. Let's be realistic. We're not expecting anybody to do that. But we are asking that everybody do their very best.