Stefan Cassella

VACI Expert

As a federal prosecutor, Stefan D. Cassella was one of the federal government’s leading experts on asset forfeiture and money laundering law for over thirty years. He now serves as an expert witness and consultant to law enforcement agencies and the private sector as the CEO of AssetForfeitureLaw, LLC.

As a Deputy Chief of the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section and later as the Chief of the Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Baltimore, Maryland, Mr. Cassella litigated some of the Government’s most significant forfeiture and money laundering cases and drafted many of the federal forfeiture and money laundering statutes.

He is the author of two treatises — Federal Money Laundering: Crimes and Forfeiture and Asset Forfeiture Law in the United States — which lead the practitioner, prosecutor, judge and policy maker through the labyrinth of statutes, rules and cases that govern these dynamic areas of the law, and of over 50 law review and magazine articles on money laundering and forfeiture. He has trained state and federal prosecutors and agents and their counterparts in numerous foreign countries, including over 200 lectures at the National Advocacy Center at the University of South Carolina.

Mr. Cassella is also the author and publisher of the Money Laundering and Forfeiture Digest, a monthly compendium of the forfeiture and money laundering cases decided by the federal courts that is circulated to hundreds of state, federal and foreign prosecutors and lawyers, law enforcement agents, academics and policy makers in the U.S. and abroad.

Vivienne Chin

VACI Expert

Vivienne is a criminal justice professional in the security and justice sectors. She has worked in government (Singapore), in an inter-governmental agency (Commonwealth Secretariat, London), a non-governmental professional organization (Commonwealth Magistrates’ and Judges’ Association, London) and for the last twenty years at the  International Centre for Criminal Law Reform, Vancouver. Her work has focused on the promotion of the rule of law and good governance, the implementation of various UN Conventions including transnational organized crime, corruption, and counter-terrorism. Vivienne’s experience includes the development of training programmes for the prevention of corruption and the smuggling of migrants and human trafficking for the UNODC; promoting and supporting the implementation of the UN Convention Against Corruption as well the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.

Yvon Dandurand

VACI Expert

Yvon Dandurand is a criminologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Fraser Valley, British Columbia (Canada), and a Fellow and Senior Associate of the ICCLR. His long career in teaching, research and policy development in the fields of crime prevention and criminal justice has led him to specialize in comparative research. He has been involved in numerous criminal justice reform and capacity building projects in Canada and abroad, including several projects and studies in the areas of organized crime, human trafficking, witness protection, corruption, crime prevention, policing, and corrections. He has authored or co-authored several books and tools to facilitate criminal law reform. Much of his work has focused on the links between corruption and organized crime, the implementation of the United Nations’ Convention Against Corruption, and the prevention of corruption within the criminal justice system and in border protection agencies. He published an issue paper and developed and tested a training program on Corruption and the Smuggling of Migrants. He also conducted the UNODC study on Safeguarding against Corruption in Major Public Events and developed a handbook and a training package on the same subject.

Dr. Peter German, KC

Chair, Advisory Committee & VACI Expert

Peter German KC, PhD, is President of the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform. A lawyer and member of the Ontario and British Columbia bars, he was previously a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, serving as its Director General of Financial Crime and as Deputy Commissioner for Western and Northern Canada. He was also Regional Deputy Commissioner Pacific for Correctional Service Canada and served as the initial team commander in the 2008 search for kidnapped Canadian diplomats in West Africa. He holds various degrees including a Doctorate in Law from the University of London, focused on asset recovery. He is the author of ‘Proceeds of Crime and Money Laundering’, published by Thomson Reuters in 1998 and currently updated bi-monthly. He is also the author of ‘Dirty Money’ and ‘Dirty Money Part 2’, reports commissioned by the Attorney General of B.C., relating to allegations of money laundering in the casino, real estate, luxury vehicle & horse racing sectors. His awards include King’s Counsel and Officer of the Order of Merit of the Police Forces.

Jeffrey Simser

VACI Expert

Jeffrey Simser was Canada’s first director of civil forfeiture and served with the Ministry of the Attorney General in Toronto, Canada for over thirty years. He is one of Canada’s leading experts on money laundering and asset forfeiture law. He holds law degrees from Queens University at Kingston and Osgoode Hall Law School. He currently has a law practice in Toronto. Mr. Simser is the author of two published books, Canadian Anti-Money laundering Law: The Gaming Sector and Civil Asset Forfeiture in Canada (loose-leaf). He has published dozens of peer-reviewed articles, including a chapter in the recently published Dirty Money: Financial Crime in Canada (2023).

Mr. Simser was twice qualified as an expert witness at the Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia (the Cullen Commission). Mr. Simser provides advice, training, and support to law enforcement in jurisdictions across Canada and around the world (including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Philippines, Guatemala, and Kenya). In 2023, he was the VACI representative at the Tenth Session of the Conference of the State Parties to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption in Atlanta. In January and February of 2024, he was the course coordinator for 8 webinars called the Lifecycle of Dirty Money, sponsored by VACI, TI Canada and the Anti-Corruption Law Program at Allard Law School.