"Nobody owned the intersection." — On the gap between AML, sanctions, and the institutions that should know better.
25 years at the frontier of financial crime, compliance technology, and the institutional power structures that shape both. Former Global Head of Name and Transaction Screening, Citibank. Senior advisory roles at Deloitte across four continents. Now independent — and unfiltered.
"Babar exudes light in a sea of dark. A mentor, a strategist, and a trusted leader."
"He helped me structure a complete technology book of work from fragmented conversations."
"Babar is brilliant at presenting solutions to complex problems with simple, pragmatic approaches leading to clear, actionable pathways."
"Babar helped move us from proof of concept to a verbal commitment on an eight-figure contract."
I spent a quarter century inside the largest financial institutions on earth — building the systems that screen for financial crime, training the teams that run them, and writing the frameworks regulators eventually cite. At Citibank I ran global name and transaction screening. At Deloitte I advised across South Asia, Southeast Asia, and beyond.
What I found, consistently: nobody owned the intersection. AML had its lane. Sanctions had its lane. Technology had its lane. And in the gaps between them, the real risk lived — undetected, unowned, unpunished.
TruPoint exists to own that intersection, for clients who can't afford to pretend it doesn't exist. My model is deliberately small: no more than three clients, 10–12 focused hours each per month. Senior judgment, competitive rates, no juniors quietly doing the work. I have lived in the United States since 1972 and hold no illusions about any country I have called home. The spine holds. Barely. But it holds.
What began on Facebook as unsolicited commentary — on power, money, sanctions, history, and the peculiar theatre of global governance — now lives here, in longer form, with less restraint.
The Chinese defense minister's warning was not escalation. It was symmetry. If the principle is that no nation controls international waterways, that principle applies to everyone — including the nation that built its post-war order on controlling them.
"Sanctions and military threats combined by the USA are nothing but uncontrolled weapons in the hands of those taking advantage of our leadership's mental deficiencies."
Before the indictments, before the Senate hearings — there was a vision. A vision that the Third World could build its own financial architecture. That story deserves more than a footnote.
The financial industry files millions of Suspicious Activity Reports. Almost nothing happens. The mechanism designed to surface financial crime has become a pressure-release valve.
The more the dollar loses sway, the weaker the sanctions architecture built on its dominance. A structural shift hiding in plain sight — and most compliance programs aren't ready for it.
When a Chinese model arrives matching Western benchmarks at a fraction of the cost, it doesn't just disrupt the AI market — it disrupts every compliance technology vendor who built their pitch on scarcity.
I didn't plan to end up in Tampa after three years moving through Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia. Nowhere Man. But the institutions I left behind are still running the same playbooks.
TruPoint is not a firm. It's a principal. You get me — directly, consistently, with 25 years of institutional scar tissue informing every recommendation.
My methodology — OutComes UpLift — targets the gap between where compliance programs exist on paper and where they need to function in practice. AI is a differentiating layer, not a feature.
AML program architecture, transaction monitoring tuning, typology development, and regulatory response strategy. Built from practitioner experience, not textbook frameworks.
Screening program design, name-matching optimization, jurisdictional calibration, and the AML–sanctions intersection that most programs leave dangerously unowned.
Practical AI deployment for compliance functions — adverse media, risk scoring, alert prioritization. The "Muddy Waters" framework. Built for decision-makers, not data scientists.
Sector-agnostic operational transformation methodology. Closes the gap between documented compliance and functional compliance. Results measured in outcomes, not deliverables.
Conferences, executive briefings, regulatory roundtables, and media appearances. Topics span financial crime, sanctions policy, AI in compliance, emerging market risk, and geopolitical commentary. Available globally.
The Mideast quagmire, Israeli intransigence, the slow erosion of the rules-based international order — these are not abstract policy questions. They are lived experiences, for notables who shaped them and for ordinary people crushed beneath them alike.
This project puts both in the same frame. Former sanctions architects. Displaced families. Central bankers. Street traders who watched their savings evaporate when the dollar moved. The whole spectrum — because the whole spectrum is the story.
If you have a story worth telling — on either end of the power spectrum — I want to hear it.
Notable, practitioner, or ordinary person with an extraordinary story — submit your proposal below. I read every one.
Get in TouchWhether you're evaluating advisory support, looking for a keynote, working on a story about financial crime, or someone with a story worth recording — I'm reachable. I respond to every substantive inquiry personally.