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10 Minute Obsessions
The podcast that insists you make it snappy
10 Minute Obsessions
Episode 1 Aisling Twomey
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Our first episode, featuring Aisling Twomey who talks about two striking obsessions. Come for the financial crime, stay for the mayhem on skates.
A warm welcome to 10 Minute Obsessions, the podcast that insists you keep it snappy. I'm Ray Blake.
SPEAKER_00And I'm Julia Chin. Each episode we invite a guest to take us deep into their obsessions. One professional topic plus one fascinating outside the workplace. 10 minutes in total, but no pay.
SPEAKER_02And today we're talking to Ashling Toomey, who I've known for a while and is a thoroughly inspirational figure in AFC. She has fingers in multiple pies in the anti-financial crime world. I'm sure she won't mind me saying, but I know her best in her role at MontoBank.
SPEAKER_00And yes, she's one of our good guys, and I'm really keen to hear what obsesses her. Hi, Ashley. How are things in London today?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, all good. The uh the weather has stopped being so hot, which is great.
SPEAKER_02That's that's nice, isn't it? Shall we uh shall we get into it then? This is where we and the listeners get to know you through two obsessions: one at work and one outside work in your wider life. You have exactly five minutes to communicate your passion and enthusiasm, perhaps to get some of it to rub off on a we tossed a coin, and that means that I get to talk to you about work, and Julia's gonna pick up on your free time obsession afterwards.
SPEAKER_00So here we go, uh uh Eff. I'm starting a five-minute timer, and when time's up, we hear the alarm sounding, or Ray telling us to stop. Tell me about your obsession.
SPEAKER_01So, my my work-based obsession is financial crime in the art market. Um, I developed that obsession when I first read this is nerdy, but when I first read the fifth money laundering directive, and I saw that art market participants were coming into scope of the regulations, and it didn't seem like the most interesting thing at the time, but as the years passed, I guess the topic sort of stuck with me. I've always loved cultural heritage, the things we make as a civilization that represent us, I guess, like books and yeah, pieces of art and jewelry and buildings. And I really love history and that kind of crossover of economic crime with kind of our story of civilization was really appealing to me. There are, I guess, two ways that art particularly can be used to launder money. So, first, there are crimes against art, like theft or fraud or forgery, and those generate proceeds of crime. And then, second, someone in possession of proceeds of crime can use that money to purchase artworks and build themselves a really nice collection. And there are really interesting, super famous examples of both things. So in the US, a really famous gallery called Nodler and Company sold fake Mark Mark Rothcoats for like millions before the entire fraud was exposed through pigment testing. And then there's also the Louvre case from last year where the crown jewels were stolen from a display case. So those are examples of the first kind. And then the second kind where people purchase collections. The best example is probably Joe Lowe, who used funds from the One Malaysia Development Fund to buy artworks, including really cool artworks by Basquiat and Van Gogh. So I'm in the middle of my PhD on the topic of money laundering in the art market because my fascination extended that far after I read the Money Laundering Directive. But longer term, I'm more interested in the question of kind of cultural heritage and who owns it and who gets to access it in an increasingly unequal world. Because there's been this sort of boom in the art market since the 1950s with these ever-escalating values for works of art, it's a kind of handy market to have access to if you've got a lot of wealth. So Roman Abramovich and his ex-wife maintained a stunning collection of art, and they often lent pieces from it to different museums across the world. Magritts and Monet's Picasso's, Milevich, Kandinsky, just such great artwork from the 20th and 21st century. And under sanctions, those have largely disappeared, which means that we get less access to really critical pieces. And I'm fascinated, I guess, by what we lose to economic crime, not just financially, but culturally, right? What are we not seeing because so many of these artworks may be in storage or stored in beautiful houses that we don't get to own either. Um so yeah, I think that's the kind of interesting intersection between financial crime and society.
SPEAKER_02There's nothing sadder really, is there, than a than a beautiful piece of art or cultural heritage that just sits in a safe.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or that get you know what they're for. No, it's not the point, right? The point is that we we get to look at them and see them and love them and study them. And there's been a piece of research that indicates an artwork that disappears doesn't get as much academic attention. So it's a piece of research that's focused particularly on a vermeer, which was stolen from Boston in 1990. And it's sad to me that people care less about this vermeer because it's inaccessible. It's called the concert, and it's been missing for a really long time now. And yeah, there's just less academic work about it. Even though we had photographs, we know exactly what it looks like. We would recognize it if we saw it again, because people can't stand in front of it or touch it or turn it over or look at it for hours. Its relevance has largely been vanished from us, and I think that's kind of sad and must apply to hundreds and thousands of other pieces of artwork that we've lost access to over the years.
SPEAKER_02So you've talked about art's prevalence as a kind of predicate crime right at the start of the money laundering journey and and and I guess as a destination for for funds uh at the end of the money laundering journey. Is it used in the middle as well?
SPEAKER_01I mean, there are ways in which you can use it in the middle, but it tends to be one of those two that we've got best worked examples of. So um academics in art crime and people who work in the art market would say they don't really see a lot in the middle. It's possible, of course, but they just don't see it. They tend to see at the beginning or at the end rather than rather than what happens in between.
SPEAKER_02I just remember, you know, reading a lot of stories a while ago about rather than transporting cash over a border, which is quite bulky and heavy, people using, you know, cocaine or heroin because it's much lighter and less bulky and sits in a wheel arch of a truck. And I'm just thinking, you know, a small piece of art with a a high level of um, you know, value could could fulfil a similar function.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Why can you not put one of Van Gogh's drawings into a suitcase that you walk through an airport with, no one's gonna see it, no one's gonna know it's there, you'd have to declare it. It's a really useful method of basically moving money around, and tracking provenance is very difficult of these things as well. They're hard to they're hard to locate owners for once you've started on that journey.
SPEAKER_02And there goes the alarm. We're we're done. That's an interesting note to end on, you know. Uh a money laundering tip for for our other kind of professional listener, perhaps.
SPEAKER_00Yes, it really gives us very good insight. I'm not familiar personally with uh art theft and uh money laundering using art, but I I think that this is definitely a topic that we can go deeper into uh in time. So now you know. Now you can be a professional. I am going to be I am really intrigued now. So let's start, uh let's have another five minutes on the clock and talk about things outside of work and tell us about your obsession.
SPEAKER_01Cool. So my my personal obsession is roller derby. Uh and roller derby is a full contact sport played on roller skates. It started um in the US in the 1930s, basically as an endurance race. You know, we we go around on skates for as long as possible, and then it evolved into a contact sport in the 1950s, kind of a choreographed thing, like uh professional wrestling, and then it fell out of fashion and it was revived in 2001 in Texas and is now a full contact competitive sport with rules, played mostly by women, trans, and non-binary folks, though some men also play, but it it's predominantly um it's predominantly uh woman non-binary and trans uh players, which is which is really interesting, it's really fun. Um, so I don't know if you're familiar with the rules, but the idea is that play happens on a large oval track and everyone moves counterclockwise around that track. Uh, there are two teams. Each team has four blockers and one jammer. The jammer is the person who's responsible for scoring points. So when the whistle blows, the jammers have to get through the blockers of the opposing team and circuit the track once. And on their second pass through the blockers, they score one point for each blocker they pass from the opposing team. Uh so I play as a jammer, but I also like blocking. And when we talk about getting through jammers, what we mean is hitting them at full pace while both they and you are on roller skates. Uh, it's not it's not gentle at all, it's quite hostile. Um, I got obsessed with it in the mid-90s because there was a film out called Whip It. And I just happened to see Whip It on TV or something. And at the time, it was in my early 20s, we won't give away more than that. I tried to set up a team in my hometown. Everyone just thought I was mental, trying to get them to play the equivalent of full contact rugby on wheels, in which a person is basically the ball. It was difficult to convince people that this might be a fun activity for a Saturday afternoon. Um, but now it's you know niche and growing, and it it exists in lots of places all over the world. I've played with the team in Malta, I've played with the team in Amsterdam, it's really everywhere, and it's got its own tournaments, which include like there's a roller derby world cup, there's five nations, there are European championships. Um yeah, that's uh that's my personal obsession, which is maybe maybe an unusual one.
SPEAKER_02Wow, okay, okay. Well, it it does sound like fun. All I could see while you were describing that, Ash, I'll be honest, is the 1970s film Rollaball with James Kahn, uh, which I guess you've seen as well.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I have seen. Yeah, it's definitely um there are similarities. Yeah, I think that's I think that's fair.
SPEAKER_02You don't but you don't get a motorbike, no?
SPEAKER_01Sadly, no. Although I think there are people in roller derby who could be convinced that that might be a good addition. In rollerball, if I remember right, uh there's pretty heavy protective gear. There's like a helmet with a cage. Yeah, so we have tried to we've tried to maximize protection. So you have to wear helmets, knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards, and a mouth guard. Um, but I gotta say the question of injuries is less of an if and more of a when. It's just likely to happen if you're gonna roll around at full tilt on eight wheels and connect with people at that kind of pace. Uh, but it's huge fun. Even when people do get injured, they still hang around, they still want to see and play and participate as much as possible.
SPEAKER_02So you effectively had to drag other people into the sport. But for someone listening to this now who thinks, oh yes, I'd love to be the ball in a violent sport. Um, how how would they go about getting involved, Dash?
SPEAKER_01So different leagues, it depends on where you are. Uh, different leagues tend to run what we would call rookies training. So you can show up basically as a beginner, maybe you've never worn roller skates before in your life. And usually leagues will lend you some kit to help you to gain the basic skills. Usually, first it's about learning to skate, learning to skate safely, learning to fall safely, which is a thing that I didn't think I would need to do, but I need to do every single day. Um, and then as time progresses, you will learn the contact elements of the sport and work out whether it's for you. One of the things I really like about roller derby is that it's kind of accessible to everyone. So you might decide that the full contact part is not for you, but you could also be a referee, you can be an official, you can you can produce a lot of value for the sport and help it to keep running, regardless of whether you decide that the full contact bit is maybe a little bit too much. So it's got yeah, it's got space for basically anyone who's interested in skating or in keeping records or keeping good paperwork and administration. There are a huge amount of roles in it, which is which I absolutely love. It's just it's really cool.
SPEAKER_02Fabulous. And look, there goes the bell. So well timed. Good work, Ash. Um, thank you for being with us today and sharing your obsessions. And to our listeners, please come back for future episodes where we meet more people who are obsessed.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes, please do. And if you enjoyed this, please tell your network if you have obsessions to share and sudden attract noises don't trigger you, please get in touch.