Nikos Passas is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, where he served for a number of years as Co-Director of the Institute for Security and Public Policy. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor at Beijing Normal University Law School, Distinguished Practitioner in Financial Integrity at Case Western Reserve Law School, and Chair of the Academic Council of the Anti-Corruption Academy in India. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Crime, Justice and Policing at the University of Birmingham, the Advisory Board of the Global Risk Profile in Geneva, the International Panel of Advisors at the Institute for Australia India Engagement in Brisbane and the Board of Directors of Compliance and Capacity Skills International in New York.
His law degree is from the Univ. of Athens (LL.B.), his Master’s from the University of Paris-Paris II (D.E.A.) and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh Faculty of Law. He is a member of the Athens Bar (Greece). He is fluent in 6 languages (English, Spanish, Greek, French, German, Italian) and plays classical guitar. He specializes in the study of international criminal law and conventions, corruption, illicit financial/trade flows, sanctions, informal fund transfers, remittances, terrorism, white-collar crime, financial regulation, organized crime and international crimes. He has published more than 240 articles, book chapters, reports and books in 15 languages.
Passas offers training to law enforcement, intelligence and private sector officials on regulatory and financial crime subjects. He regularly serves as expert witness in court cases or public hearings and consults with law firms, financial institutions, private security and consulting companies and various organizations, including the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), OECD, OSCE, the IMF, the World Bank, the Council of Europe, other multilateral and bilateral institutions, the United Nations (ODC, Development Programme, Security Council, etc.), the Caribbean FATF, the European Union, the US National Academy of Sciences, research institutions and government agencies in all continents. His work with UNODC includes the design and initiation of the legal library of UNCAC-related national texts and the design and content of the UNCAC review mechanism software and checklist.
He served as Team Leader for a European Union Commission project on the control of proliferation/WMD finance. His current projects focus on financial crisis, public debt and institutional corruption, the role of banks in cross-border corruption, anti-corruption authorities, assessment of anti-corruption practices, integrity and accountability, trade-facilitated financial crime, the regulation of remittance flows in cash-based societies, and on use of IT for the enhancement of due diligence conducted by financial institutions. He organized the launching and coordinated a global inter-disciplinary academic initiative on anti-corruption courses and materials, supported by Northeastern Univ., UNODC, OECD, and the International Bar Association to reach out to universities and educational institutions around the world. He has been co-Director of the Institute for Security and Public Policy at Northeastern, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies and Law School, University of Birmingham, Visiting Professor at Vienna University of Applied Sciences for Management & Communication’s Center for Corporate Governance & Business Ethics, an INSPIRE Fellow at Tufts University’s Institute of Global Leadership, Consortium Member and Distinguished Inaugural Professor of Collective Action, Business Ethics and Compliance at the International Anti-Corruption Academy, Vienna, (where he helped launch and teach a global anticorruption MA degree and create a second MA degree on compliance and collective action), Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Visiting Professor at the Basel Institute on Governance and Corruption Program Director at the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association (ECOA).
His main current project revolves around international regulation and control of illicit financial and commercial flows, governance and anticorruption with a focus on COVID-19, quality of governance and serious crime. Starting in September 2020 Prof. Passas is leading a consortium for research and action against illicit and falsified medical products and supply chains with financial support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which has been extended for another 4 years. His other current projects include a WHO comparative study on anti-corruption in the health sector as well as a US study and training program on biorisk management and biological weapons controls in Africa.
