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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/

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