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“Still waters run deep.” Fewer sayings capture trade-based financial crime (TBFC) better.  

Beneath the still surface of legitimate global trade, illicit funds slip quietly across borders, concealed by layers and layers of paperwork, inconsistent regulations, and outdated systems. It’s a crime that drains $1.6 trillion from economies every year – resources that could otherwise fuel development, build infrastructure, and stabilise financial systems.  

Instead, they’re diverted into criminal networks, undermining both economic integrity and international security. This year’s Europol Serious and Organised Crime Threat Assessment (EU-SOCTA 2025) report further highlights the challenge, as organised crime groups now weaponise AI to exploit our fragmented digital infrastructures and expand their operations. Yet despite the growing scale and sophistication, TBFC remains one of the least reported and least understood financial crimes.  

So why, when the risks are clear, is no one stopping it? 
 

Underestimating the threat to the economy 

Trade finance is often seen as safe. Transactions are backed by paperwork, governed by regulation, and tied to the legitimate flow of goods. But that sense of security is precisely what makes it such an effective cover. Criminals know how to work the cracks.  

And this is why the problem remains so hard to stop. Yes, the risks are clear – but detection is extraordinarily difficult with the tools most institutions rely on today. Mis-priced invoices, falsified bills of lading, or a container listed as carrying “machinery parts” that in reality holds dual-use goods often slip through the net. Individually, these details look unremarkable. But at scale, they create a web of deception capable of moving billions across borders with barely a trace. It’s no surprise that TBFC is estimated to account for 31% of global fraud costs, making it one of the most damaging and elusive threats to international trade. 

The complexity of the ecosystem only amplifies the problem further. Documentation is fragmented across jurisdictions, while TBFC risk management is typically distributed across three to four departments within most institutions. Almost 60% of European banks even cite siloed data and disconnected workflows as major obstacles to their operations, leaving critical gaps that criminals are exploiting. 

This is then magnified by wider instability, with regulations and sanctions lists changing daily, sometimes hourly. Yet compliance teams, still reliant on legacy systems and manual checks, are expected to keep pace. Combine that with the fusion of fraud, technology, and organised crime that’s reshaping criminal operations and institutions find themselves in a challenging situation. Bad actors are simply making the most of emerging technologies, like generative AI, to scale their tactics, but outdated tools and processes cannot keep pace.  

Without investing in next-generation solutions, institutions risk falling behind, exposing themselves not just to financial loss, but to regulatory, reputational, and operational damage. Detection of TBFC, therefore, needs to become less about spotting surface ripples and more about seeing the hidden currents running deeper beneath. 

The question now is: how can organisations achieve this? 
 

Technology as the ultimate ally 

To turn the tide, financial institutions must build a layered digital defence – one that combines automation, AI, and advanced monitoring in a way that coexists alongside trade finance's current systems. These tools provide the foundation for a proactive and intelligence-led approach – one that offers real-time insights into trade activity, identifies red flags early, and ensures compliance combined with trade finance teams are no longer reliant on time-consuming manual reviews. 

Automation provides the foundation for this. It connects the dots between the likes of invoices, bills of lading, and shipping data scattered across jurisdictions. By linking and cross-checking documents in real time, automation exposes mismatches that would otherwise be buried in paper trails. It also constantly screens against rapidly changing sanctions and watchlists, helping institutions maintain a consistent and portable integrity record – the early building block of what is evolving into a digital Compliance Passport for each trade. 

AI then takes this further. Using pattern recognition, it detects elements such as overpricing, under-invoicing or the abuse of dual-use goods, items that rarely raise suspicion in manual checks. Natural Language Processing even transforms unstructured documents – from scanned PDFs to handwritten forms – into structured, searchable data that can be analysed at scale to further support this. Generative AI adds another dimension, cross-checking product descriptions against external market data and having the capacity to reveal anomalies that would otherwise pass through. 

The final layer is advanced monitoring. Integrated dashboards bring these capabilities together, giving compliance teams real-time visibility across global trade flows. With maritime intelligence, for example, unusual shipping routes, vessel ownership changes or transactions routed through sanctioned ports can be flagged instantly. The previous lack of oversight shifts from a reactive, box-ticking exercise to a proactive investigation. 

When combined, these technologies return the advantage back to compliance teams. No longer trapped in paperwork, they can finally uncover what criminals work so hard to conceal – and to do so at the same speed those criminals are evolving. 
 

Turning the tide through innovation 

The convergence of automation, AI, and advanced monitoring gives institutions the first real chance to fight TBFC at scale.  But tools alone won’t shift the balance. What matters is how institutions use them to create embedded trust – trust that travels with the transaction and supports a more transparent, investable trade ecosystem. 

This means challenging the outdated assumption that trade finance is inherently safe. As long as that myth persists, TBFC will continue to thrive in the spaces no one is watching. Institutions that fail to evolve are not just exposing themselves to penalties or reputational damage, but they’re leaving the integrity of global trade itself at risk. 

The choice is clear.  

Either financial institutions embrace innovation and shine a light on the hidden depths where TBFC thrives. Or remain blind to the truth that still waters, in fact, do run deep.  

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