MARTELLO RISK
Alexander Yearsley
Managing Director
From 1997-2009 Alex was Head Of Special Projects for Global Witness conducting field and forensic investigations into the illicit trades in natural resources and weapons across Africa. At the same time, he campaigned successfully for legislative change in both Europe and North America to improve the accountability of international mineral and timber markets. He has also worked closely as a consultant to a number of United Nations agencies, Interpol and the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
At Global Witness he was instrumental in initiating the Kimberley Process certification system for rough diamonds and was lead negotiator for Global Witness during the intergovernmental dicussions from 1999 to 2003, producing a number of publications which reviewed the global diamond trade and their control mechanisms or lack thereof. He was a leading civil society participant in a number of the first Kimberley Process review visits established to monitor the effectiveness of the control system.
In the private sector Alex has undertaken forensic auditing and financial investigations for law firms, multinationals, private clients, international organisations and law enforcement agencies relating to the extractive industries, transnational organised crime and financial services.
Click here for Alexander Yearsley’s www.rt.com interview: Blood diamonds money ends up in New York, London, Monaco
Dr Caspar Fithen
Operations Director
With over twenty years’ experience working on the political economy of extractive industries in conflict-affected areas, much of it undertaken in the field, Caspar is an internationally-acknowledged expert on the management of natural resources, particularly within the alluvial and artisanal mining sectors, and the establishment, management and audit of supply chains and chains of custody concerned with both minerals and timber.
During the course of his career, Caspar has worked extensively with the United Nations Security Council as a member of numerous Panels of Experts, the European Commission as Special Adviser on the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the US State Department and the UK Department for International Development. He also has extensive private sector experience advising a broad range of clients from the Norwegian Government Pension Fund to mining and hydrocarbons multinationals on anti-corruption and compliance issues, in particular with regard to the 2010 US Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas, and the 2010 UK Bribery Act.
The author of a significant corpus of work written for both academic and official audiences, Caspar also holds a PhD in the conflict economy of the West African diamond trade from University College, London.
Jamie Murray
CEO
Jamie is a specialist in strategic crisis management in various arenas including: nuclear energy and weapons, oil and gas, banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and government agencies, assisting to evolve and develop their crisis management plans, processes and leadership.
He has been instrumental in the development of many crisis management plans and processes. He is particularly expert in the human aspects of the process, focussing on decision-making and effective communications. Recently he has been involved as principal consultant in the UK government’s review of the regulation of the nuclear generation industry.
Jamie performs a trusted advisor role to a number of board level and senior executives.
Areas of expertise: Effective Strategic Leadership development, Crisis Management Consultancy, Training Development and Delivery, Project Management, Project Turn-around, Process and Change Management.
He had a first career as an officer in the British Army Air Corps.
les Moskovitz
Lead EMEA Advisory
Les has almost 4 decades of hands-on experience and expertise operating in numerous countries across Africa, at all levels of Government and commerce, and in Europe and the Middle East doing business with people who share the same values of ethics, integrity and transparency.
Throughout the 4 decades and the trusted relationships built, Les created channels of problem-solving and a careful balance of creativity and logical thinking whilst demonstrating his expertise in communications, implementing innovative solutions and proven resilience across a wide cross section of industries. These led to added-value services provided such as supporting efforts in commercial disputes, asset tracking & recovery, in-country operations for due diligence, assessments, investigations, cross border deceptions and litigation support.
Les is passionate about the ethics of FCPA, compliance, anti-corruption, anti-bribery and all the allied “sins”. The Martello Executive team worked successfully with Les for some years prior to bringing him “in-house”.
Aside from the routine ongoing activities, Les is focusing on the new massive wave of attempts being made to fraudulently divert COVID-19 global funding into the hands of corrupt officials worldwide.
ASSOCIATES
CHRISTINE GORDON
ASSOCIATE
Christine Gordon has twenty years experience of working in the field on the diamond pipeline, from mines to trading and cutting centres, in a total of twenty countries. She has been involved in the Kimberley Process since 2001, when she was working for the United Nations as the diamond expert on the UN Monitoring Mechanism during the Angolan Civil War.
Christine has undertaken Kimberley Process missions on behalf of Civil Society, looking principally at internal controls and diamond production. This involves examing the entire chain of custody inside a Kimberley Process member country, from mine to point of export, though documentation and field trips. She is an experienced researcher of issues related to the diamond industry, from the multinational operations of companies to issues such as the registration of artisanal miners in Angola.
EMMA IRWIN
ASSOCIATE
Emma Irwin is a mining sector governance and social responsibility expert, with over 15 years experience in countries including Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa. She has most recently been working with the World Bank on Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) implementation in Myanmar (Burma) and in Guinea. Prior to that she worked as a minerals governance adviser in Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines, providing support on various governance and policy issues including reviewing and updating the ASM formalisation strategy.
She has extensive experience working ‘on-the-ground’ with mining companies and local communities in Africa and in Asia. In Guinea and Mali she worked as a social consultant for a major gold mining operation that was experiencing significant local community unrest as well as huge numbers of orpailleurs/ASM gold miners in, on and around its concession areas. Here, she carried out numerous stakeholder interviews, including with different groups within the local ASM communities (women, youth, etc), to assess the extent to which the large scale gold mining company could reach a ‘peaceful coexistence’ with the ASM community digging in its concession area. This led to the production of a site-specific strategic sustainability management framework including a social impact and community relations scoping study, a stakeholder engagement action plan and an integrated community development action plan for the company. Irwin’s work with EITI as both a technical adviser supporting countries with EITI implementation (Myanmar, Afghanistan, Guinea and Mongolia), and as a validator of countries’ compliance to the process (Mozambique and Cameroon), has also contributed to her in-depth understanding of local and regional extractive industry related challenges and opportunities, including those related to ASM.
She has extensive experience working with a wide range of stakeholders, from senior government officials to company representatives to local community based organisations. Emma has also advised a luxury jewellery company on the responsible sourcing of metals and gemstones and developed their ethical sourcing policy.
She continues to focus on and be very interested in responsible metals and minerals value chains, from mine to market, and has just been working on a baseline assessment of the gemstone sector in Myanmar for Myanmar EITI and the World Bank.
William Lloyd George
ASSOCIATE
William is an accomplished business and political risk analyst with a diverse range of international business and cultural experience. He has provided political risk analysis for governments, blue chip companies and large NGOs.
His analysis has also been published in TIME, The Economist, The Guardian, Foreign Policy Magazine as well as other international journals.
Based out of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, William specializes in challenging political environments including Mexico, Colombia, West Africa, the Horn of Africa and Myanmar.
He is an accomplished linguist and holds a 1st Class honours degree in Burmese Language and Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Orton Kiishweko
ASSOCIATE
Orton Kiishweko has specialized as an investigator/ private risk management consultant for the last 13 years in Eastern and Southern Africa (SADC, EAC and COMESA countries).
For over 13 years, he has assisted clients in the UK and North America overcome risks and communications challenges in Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, Madagascar, DR Congo, Burundi and Malawi in the extractives industry, pharmaceuticals, intelligence support, fraud investigations and due diligence.
As an award winning investigative journalist, he has previously worked for local newspapers in the East African region such as the Daily Nation, Tanzania’s Citizen and Daily News, and has contributed globally to the New York Times. He regularly writes for The Guardian, Forbes Africa, The Diplomat, IPS Africa, Business Daily in Kenya and the Management Journal of East Africa.
Supporting operations for Africa, he has previously worked in Silicon Valley relying on his expertise in ethnography, ethnographic research, observational research, contextual research, point-of-sale research, qualitative research, user experience, usability testing, design thinking, and user research to assist clients scale up operations in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Awards
In 2011 he was the Tanzanian winner of The Excellence in Journalism Award
He is also a Fellow at George Washington University in Doha, Qatar.
Roberto Sollazzo
ASSOCIATE
is an international expert in Natural Resources-related risk analysis and mitigation with 15 years of field experience in transitional, post-crisis and developing contexts. A PhD in African History and Politics, he maintains collaboration with the Department of African studies at the University of Naples Federico II. In 2015 he was one of the peer reviewers of the report commissioned by the OECD to the Global Initiative on IFF and Criminal Economies in West Africa.
He previously served five consecutive terms (2013-2017) as a United Nations Security Council Expert reporting on the effective implementation of UN-imposed sanctions. In this capacity, he unveiled the details of mineral and non-mineral smuggling networks from Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to end-user markets.
Prior to his service with the United Nations he worked for Revenue Watch Institute (currently Natural Resource Governance Institute) in New York where he specialised in money laundering; Resource Consulting Services (RCS) in Barcelona where he designed, managed and implemented research projects on extractive industry sustainability, forest and land use, political economy analysis and natural resources governance; the European Union External Action Service where he served as a Long Term Election Observer in Côte d’Ivoire, Niger and Tunisia; and, as a Lecturer and Researcher on the Politics and Natural Resource Governance of Africa and the Middle East at the University of Napoli “Federico II” – Napoli.
He has sound geographical expertise having worked in 23 natural resource-rich countries in Africa and worldwide in the areas of natural resources governance and compliance to international standards and political economy analysis. He is a recognised expert in due diligence procedures and traceability mechanisms. He has built an extensive network of partners, which includes policy-makers, donor countries and agencies, influencers, civil society and international organizations. He is fluent in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
Andreas Silverbridge
ASSOCIATE
Andreas is a former Military officer with the Swedish Commandos Amphibious Corps. With years of successful supervision and leadership experience he possesses the strong ability to meet tight deadlines even under significant pressure. He has held a variety of senior military positions which demanded the highest levels of security and organizational ability from weapons program procurement to systems management to acting as the security liaison officer for the Swedish Royal family.
The mixture of his successful military career and his technical skills are the solid platform to perform in depth analysis in the area of due diligence, compliance and other security related issue. He is fluent in English, Swedish, has a working knowledge of French, Portuguese, Norwegian and has Swedish, Portuguese and Angolan citizenship.
MARTELLO RISK
AMJAD RIHAN
Senior Advisor
Amjad Rihan is a credible and trusted name in the field of fighting financial crime, specifically within the Precious Metals trade. His strategic advice and analysis is regularly sought by authorities, the private sector, intergovernmental organisations, reputable international development agencies and NGOs. He assists major media outlets in complex matters related to financial crime, such as money laundering in the Precious Metals trade.
Mr. Rihan has spent more than 18 years working in North America, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, gaining unique exposure to best global practices and providing strategic services to leading multinationals. These include North American, European and the Middle Eastern Fortune 500 companies such as Shell, Scotiabank, Mercedes-Benz and World Bank.
Sir Richard Shirreff OBE
Senior Advisor
Sir Richard Shirreff was NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe between 2011 and 2014. As a member of NATO’s strategic command group and deputy to NATO’s US strategic commander, he was responsible for close engagement with a wide range of stakeholders: allied and coalition nations, international and humanitarian organisations, NGOs and theatre commanders in the implementation of strategy. Under the Berlin Plus Agreement between NATO and the EU he was also the Operation Commander of the EU Operation in Bosnia-Herzegovina for which he redesigned the strategy, reporting to the EU Policy Security Committee and EU Foreign Ministers.
A professional soldier for 37 years, he previously commanded the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps between 2007 and 2011. Prior to that, Sir Richard commanded operations in Iraq, Kosovo, the First Gulf War and Northern Ireland. He also has extensive senior staff experience at Army HQ and in the Ministry of Defence. He graduated in Modern History from Oxford University in 1977 and is a Member of the Royal College of Defence Studies. He was knighted in the 2010 UK New Year’s Honours.
Emma Priestley (BEng, CEng, CRICS)
Senior Mining Advisor
Emma has a background in mining and financial services having worked with mining companies and consultants, IMC Mackay & Schnellmann, investment bank CSFB, advisers VSA Resources, Ambrian Partners, where she worked as corporate broker and adviser, and most recently as an executive director of Lonrho Plc until its successful takeover.
Emma is a graduate of Camborne School of Mines, is a chartered Mining Engineer and Chartered Mineral Surveyor.
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