Elise Bean
From 1985 to 2014, Elise Bean worked for Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) conducting investigations, including 15 years at the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI). Appointed his PSI staff director and chief counsel in 2003, Ms. Bean handled investigations, hearings, and legislation on matters involving shell companies with hidden owners, money laundering, offshore tax abuse, corruption, and corporate misconduct. After Senator Levin retired in 2015, she helped establish the Levin Center at Wayne Law in his honor, and now works for the Center to help strengthen legislative capacities at the national, state, and international levels to conduct oversight investigations. In 2018, she became a published author of a book entitled, Financial Exposure: Carl Levin’s Senate Investigations into Finance and Tax Abuse.
Ms. Bean graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University and received a law degree from the University of Michigan. She clerked for the Chief Judge of the U.S. Claims Court, and worked for two years at the U.S. Department of Justice. In 2018, Ms. Bean was recognized as a leader in tax justice matters by Global Witness. In 2016 and 2015, she was included in the Global Tax 50, a list compiled by the International Tax Review of the year’s top 50 individuals and organizations influencing tax policy and practice. In 2013 and 2011, the Washingtonian magazine named her one of Washington’s 100 most powerful women. In 2010, the National Law Journal selected her as one of Washington’s most influential women lawyers.
Erica Hanichak
Erica Hanichak is the government affairs director at the FACT Coalition, where she leads the group’s engagement with federal policymakers.
Erica is an advocacy professional dedicated to ending global corruption and the abuses it perpetuates. Before joining FACT, Erica spent five years working with U.S.-based nonprofits focused on advancing transparent governance, accountability, and rule of law in the Middle East. From 2017-2020, Erica served as government relations director at Americans for a Free Syria, where she partnered with lawmakers, administration officials, and other grassroots nonprofit organizations to pass and implement bipartisan legislation targeting the networks that fuel mass human rights violations in Syria and the region. She likewise campaigned to augment counterterror financing measures and prevent the diversion and abuse of U.S. humanitarian aid. She previously worked as an analyst of U.S.-Turkish relations in Washington, D.C.
Erica has appeared on Fox News, CBN News, and international television media, and her work and comments have been featured in The Hill, The Daily Beast, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, among others. She holds a Bachelors of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in International Politics, with a focus on International Security and Eurasian Studies.
Gabe Lezra
Gabe Lezra is the Federal Policy Manager and a Senior Counsel at CREW, where he specializes in anti-corruption and United States government ethics law and policy. Gabe also serves as the Policy Working Group Leader for the Declaration for American Democracy (DFAD) Coalition, where he has helped develop the coalition’s democracy reform and good government agenda. Gabe frequently advises members of
Congress and Executive branch policymakers on topics related to financial corruption and corporate transparency, Congressional, judicial, and executive branch ethics, and matters of accountability and institutional legitimacy.
Prior to CREW, Gabe practiced financial institution regulation and anti-money laundering law at Debevoise and Plimpton, and advised major financial institutions on compliance with federal banking law and their obligations to federal financial regulators.
Gabe received his J.D. cum laude from Georgetown Law and his B.A. with high honors from Wesleyan University.
Gabe is an expert in financial corruption, corporate transparency and illicit finance, democracy reform, and United States government ethics law and policy.
Gary Kalman
Gary Kalman directs the U.S. office of Transparency International, the global anti-corruption coalition. He oversees the organization’s U.S. operations focusing on illicit finance and the U.S. role in global anti-corruption efforts.
He is a founding member of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition and served as its Executive Director from 2016 through 2019. In that capacity he worked with the more than 100 state, national and international member organizations to promote policies to combat the harmful impacts of corrupt financial practices.
Gary was an executive vice president with the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), where he oversaw CRL’s federal policy and legislative work. He directed the federal legislative office for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). While at U.S. PIRG, he was a leading voice for congressional ethics and lobbying reform having served on a bipartisan task force convened by the Speaker of the House which led to the creation of the independent Office of Congressional Ethics. He was a founding member and executive committee member of Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition which, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, led the successful fight for the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law.
He has testified in Congress on numerous occasions on financial accountability. He previously taught at LaSalle University and Temple University in Philadelphia and he continues to be a regular speaker and commentator on anti-corruption and transparency issues at conferences and events around the world. His comments and work have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and on NPR, Fox News, and MSNBC among other outlets.
Jodi Vittori
Jodi Vittori is an expert on the linkages of corruption, state fragility, illicit finance, and US national security. She is a non-resident fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the US Research and Policy Manager for Transparency International’s Defense and Security Program, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She is also a founder and co-moderator of the Anti-Corruption Advocacy Network (ACAN), which facilitates information exchange on corruption-related issues amongst over 450 participating individuals and organizations. Before joining Transparency International, Jodi was a senior policy adviser for Global Witness, where she managed educational and advocacy activities on linkages between corruption and national security. Prior to that, Jodi served in the U.S. Air Force, advancing to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel; her overseas service included Afghanistan, Iraq, South Korea, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, and she was assigned to NATO’s only counter-corruption task force. She was an Assistant Professor and military faculty at the US Air Force Academy and the National Defense University. Jodi has published on conflict finance and illicit financial flows and she is the author of the book Terrorist Financing and Resourcing and a co-author of the handbook Corruption Threats and International Missions: Practical Guidance for Leaders. She is a graduate of the US Air Force Academy and received her PhD in International Studies from the University of Denver.
John Cassara
John Cassara began his 26 year U.S. government career as an intelligence officer during the Cold War. He later served as a Treasury Special Agent in both the U.S. Secret Service and US Customs Service where he investigated money laundering, trade fraud and international smuggling. He was an undercover arms dealer for two years. Assigned overseas, he developed expertise in Middle East money laundering, value transfer and underground financial systems. Concerned about trade-based money laundering, he invented the concept of Trade Transparency Units (TTUs). He also worked six years for Treasury’s FinCEN and was detailed to the Department of State. Mr. Cassara’s final assignment was with Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI). Since his retirement, he has lectured in the United States and around the world on a variety transnational crime issues. He is also a consultant for government and industry and is on the Board of Directors of Global Financial Integrity. He has testified numerous times as an expert witness before Congressional committees. Mr. Cassara has authored numerous articles and five books, including Trade-Based Money Laundering: The Next Frontier in International Money Laundering Enforcement.
Raymond Baker
Raymond Baker is the Founding President of Global Financial Integrity and the author of Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System, published by John Wiley & Sons and cited by the Financial Times as one of the “best business books of 2005.” He has for many years been an internationally respected authority on corruption, money laundering, growth, and foreign policy issues, particularly as they concern emerging market and developing countries and impact western economic and foreign interests. He has written and spoken extensively, testified often before legislative committees in the United States, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, been quoted worldwide, and has commented frequently on television and radio in the the United States, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia on legislative matters and policy questions, including appearances on ABC News’ Nightline, Al Jazeera, BBC, Bloomberg TV, the CBS Evening News, CNN, NPR, PBS, and Four Corners (ABC1 in Australia), among others.
Mr. Baker founded Global Financial Integrity in 2006, and the GFI team has produced more than 25 economic analyses of resource transfers affecting countries, regions, and the world. GFI has led in securing the terminology and the reality of illicit financial flows onto the global political-economy agenda. He also serves on the Policy Advisory Board of Transparency International-USA and on the Advisory Board of the Ethical Research Institute.
In 1996 he received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for a project entitled, “Flight Capital, Poverty and Free-Market Economics.” He serves on the World Economic Forum’s Meta-Council on the Illicit Economy. He traveled to 23 countries to interview 335 central bankers, commercial bankers, government officials, economists, lawyers, tax collectors, security officers, and sociologists on the relationships between bribery, commercial tax evasion, money laundering, and economic growth. From 1985 to 1996 Mr. Baker provided confidential economic advisory services at the presidential level for developing country governments. Activities focused principally on issues surrounding anti-corruption strategies, international terms of trade, and developing country debt. Research was conducted with 550 business owners and managers in eleven countries, concerning import and export mispricing and movement of tax-evading capital, and money laundering.
From 1976 to 1985 Mr. Baker conducted extensive trading activities throughout Latin America and in ten Asian countries including the People’s Republic of China. An affiliated company in London handled transactions in Europe. From 1961 to 1976 he lived in Nigeria and established and managed an investment company which set up and acquired manufacturing and financing ventures, the subject of two Harvard Business School case studies. Educated at Harvard Business School and Georgia Institute of Technology, Mr. Baker is the author of “The Biggest Loophole in the Free-Market System,” “Illegal Flight Capital; Dangers for Global Stability,” “How Dirty Money Binds the Poor,” and other works published in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Latin America.
Scott Greytak
Scott Greytak is the Advocacy Director for the U.S. office of Transparency International (“TI”), the world’s oldest and largest anti-corruption network. He manages the U.S. office’s federal legislative agenda, which includes issues impacting political integrity, illicit finance, corporate transparency, and whistleblower protection. Greytak has helped lead legislative, legal, and ballot measure initiatives on campaign finance, voting, foreign influence, gerrymandering, and ethics, and is a nationally recognized expert on judicial corruption. He’s written extensively on democracy and civil rights issues in popular and scholarly publications, and authored anti-corruption laws in Florida, Nevada, Alaska, and the Dakotas, among other jurisdictions. Before joining TI, Greytak helped pass over 20 state and local anti-corruption reforms as Senior Counsel for RepresentUs, the largest grassroots anti-corruption organization in the U.S. Before that, he designed legal challenges to cases such as Citizens United v. FEC as Counsel for Free Speech For People, and authored the leading report on judicial corruption in the U.S. as Senior Policy Counsel for Justice at Stake. He chairs the Legislative Committee of the ACLU of D.C. and was the 2018 American Constitution Society Lawyer Chapter President of the Year. He holds Juris Doctor and Bachelor of Arts degrees from Ohio State University.
Susan Harley
Susan is the deputy director for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, where she helps coordinate all aspects of the division’s advocacy across multiple issue campaigns, specializing in financial reform, international tax issues and open government initiatives. Susan received her bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and received her J.D., cum laude in public law and regulation from MSU’s College of Law. She is a member of the State Bar of Michigan. Prior to joining Public Citizen, she worked as the Michigan policy director of Clean Water Action and Clean Water Fund.
Media Appearances: Susan has been quoted or published in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Roll Call, The Hill, American Banker, The Nation, TIME, Consumerist, Detroit News, Huffington Post and ValueWalk among other media. Susan has appeared on C-SPAN, Boom Bust, America’s Workforce Radio, The Union Edge, Uprising with Sonali, Living Room, Saturday Morning Talkies, KBOO/Portland and other broadcast media outlets.
Tom Cardamone
Tom Cardamone is the President and CEO of Global Financial Integrity (GFI). Mr. Cardamone is responsible for the strategic planning and promotion of organizational goals and policy positions to key audiences, including high-level government officials and multilateral institutions. He also leads promotion of GFI’s trade risk-assessment database GFTrade, which enables developing country customs officials to better detect instances of trade misinvoicing in order to capture more domestic resources.
Throughout his career, Mr. Cardamone has served as an analyst, consultant, project director and executive director to several non-profit organizations. He has advocated numerous policy positions related to increasing global financial security and transparency through appearances on CNN, CNBC, Canadian Broadcasting, as well as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. He has delivered remarks on various policy issues to the UN, the OECD and has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Tutu Alicante
Tutu Alicante is from Annobón, Equatorial Guinea. Before founding EG Justice, Tutu worked as a legal consultant with international NGOs, promoting legal accountability and transparency in the extractive industry. In 2007, he received a fellowship from Echoing Green to establish EG Justice. Prior to that, he worked as an employment attorney with the Southern Migrant Legal Services, where he represented migrant farm-workers. Tutu holds a Masters in Law degree from Columbia Law School and a law degree from the University of Tennessee.
Chuck Collins
Chuck Collins is the Director the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org.
He is author of the forthcoming book, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Billions (Polity Press), about the wealth defense industry. He is an expert on tax policy, illicit finance, dynasty trusts, family offices, and solutions to individual and corporate wealth hiding. He has written numerous articles about the Panama Papers, illicit finance in real estate, the Luanda Leaks, the wealth defense industry, and how lack of transparency contributes to economic inequality.
He is author of a number of studies examining anonymous shell companies and luxury real estate including Towering Excess: The Perils of the Luxury Real Estate Boom for Bostonians and Who is Buying Seattle?
Collins is author of the popular book, Born on Third Base (Chelsea Green) and Is Inequality in America Irreversible? is published by the Oxford, UK-based Polity Press. He is co-author, with Bill Gates Sr., of Wealth and Our Commonwealth, (Beacon Press, 2003), a case for taxing inherited fortunes. He is a board member of the Patriotic Millionaires and launched a global call in January 2020, at the Davos World Economic Forum, for millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes and stop global tax evasion.
Zoe Reiter
Zoe Reiter is Co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Data Collective (ACDC) and Director of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), where she leads a new line of work to engage stakeholders and communities affected by corruption to push for better laws and practices from our federal government. Prior to coming on board at POGO, Zoë worked as the International Secretariat of Transparency International, responsible for development and implementation of numerous international initiatives with anticorruption activists and reformers from around the world to tackle the mechanisms that foster national and international corruption, including anonymous shell companies.
Zoe is an expert in the role that BO and AML plays in undermining national and international corruption, undue influence, trafficking, and abuse of power.