Stephen Ratcliffe

Steve is a Head of Investigations in the Basel Institute’s International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR). He was promoted to this role in 2024, having joined the Institute in August 2015 as a Senior Specialist in Financial Investigations.

Previously he worked for the Royal Cayman Islands Police and was in charge of their financial crime and intelligence departments. He co-chaired the group which wrote the money-laundering risk assessment in advance of the FATF inspection due in 2017.

Prior to this he was a police officer in the UK’s Metropolitan Police for 31 years where most recently he was a senior officer within the serious and organised crime division between 2007-2014. His work specialised in targeting nationally and internationally significant criminals who had amassed sizeable criminal assets and therefore required a detailed, complex and sustained investigative response.

After the terrorist attacks of September 2001 he was responsible for creating the National Terrorist Financial Investigation Unit (NTFIU) based in Scotland Yard. This multi-agency and multi-disciplinary body was responsible for the investigation of terrorist financing; the creation of training courses and their delivery nationally and internationally and the mainstreaming of financial investigation into pro-active terrorist investigations.

Steve holds a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge in Applied Criminology and Management.