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Bonnie Goldblatt is a Bates Consulting and Testifying Expert with over 40 years combined government and international banking experience. She is a financial services professional focusing on the strategic development of financial crimes programs to ensure timely identification, resolution, and escalation of any issues to Legal, Regulatory and Compliance partners. She is an expert in AML, Fraud, Sanctions, Anti-Bribery and Corruption, and Internal Investigations. As a seasoned former law enforcement professional, she has expertise in asset forfeiture and transnational financial crimes investigations, trial preparation and expert testimony. Bonnie has a proven track record in developing and implementing sustainable programs applying forward and innovative thinking to the design and redesign of processes and procedures to optimize global risk mitigation.
Bonnie joined Citibank to design and implement their Global Financial Crimes Investigations and Intelligence Unit fusing intelligence and data analytics to identify and mitigate risk and provide feedback to senior compliance leaders. During her 13-year tenure, she created a broad range of written policies and procedures to address emerging trends such as cyber-enabled crime and elder financial exploitation, reengineered existing processes to include streamlining the 314 (a) (b) and subpoena referral processes, and spearheaded AML compliance and fraud oversight reviews. She routinely engaged with internal audit and presented on quarterly ongoing supervisory meetings with the OCC. Bonnie managed global teams focusing on high profile, complex, investigations covering a broad range of products and business sectors to include private wealth, institutional, retail, correspondent banks, MSB's and NBFI clients. She was selected to participate in the Yale University, School of Management Executive Leadership Program.
Prior to joining Citibank, Bonnie served as a National Program Manager for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responsible for designing and implementing an international Cultural Property, Arts and Antiquities Program focusing on the illicit arts trade. She created a state-of-the-art training program in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution and U.S. Department of State to train the 8,000 DHS agents and foreign attaches.
She represented DHS as well as its predecessor agency, The U.S. Customs Service, on the Eldorado Money Laundering Financial Task Force, implementing the provisions of THE PATRIOT Act and Bank Secrecy Act to lead parallel asset forfeiture investigations on criminal cases involving drug smuggling, human trafficking, sanctions evasion, Customs fraud, and intellectual property rights. Bonnie represented the U.S Government at a broad range of international conferences and provided training to foreign governments on U.S. and international law designed to combat the illicit smuggling of cultural property.
Bonnie frequently presents at U.S. Government and industry trade conferences and has taught anti-money laundering compliance as an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University School of Law since 2015.
Bates Group, Consulting and Testifying Expert, 2024 – Present
Citibank, N.A., Independent Compliance Risk Management and Global Financial Crimes Investigations and Intelligence, 2010 – 2023; Managing Director, Global Head of Investigations and External Engagement, 2022 – 2023; Senior Director, 2020 – 2022; Director, 2012 – 2020; Senior Vice President, 2010 - 2012
Fordham University School of Law, Adjunct Professor, 2015 - Present
United States Department of Homeland Security, Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2003 – 2010; Art and Antiquities Program Manager, 2008 – 2010; Eldorado Money Laundering Task Force, 2003 – 2008
United States Customs Service, Art Fraud Program Head, 1993 – 2003
Executive Studies, Leading and Managing Globally, Yale School of Management, New Haven, CT
Master of Business Administration (MBA) Candidate, Banking, Corporate Finance and Securities- Currently Pursuing, New York University, Stern School of Business, New York, NY
Bachelor of Science (BS), Administration of Justice, American University, Washington, D.C.
Featured in Tribeca Film Festival Documentary “Portrait of Wally.” Internationally acclaimed film that tracks a Nazi-looted painting from an Austrian gallery owner during WWII, the seizure by US federal authorities while on loan to MOMA, and the historic 13-year court battle resulting in a $19 Million restitution to the Austrian gallery owner’s heirs.