Gonzalo Saiz Erausquin

Gonzalo is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Finance and Security at RUSI, focusing on sanctions and counter threat finance. His research focuses on sanctions implementation, circumvention and evasion tactics, and sanctions enforcement. He leads the research of Euro SIFMANet (European Sanctions and Illicit Finance Monitoring and Analysis Network). Gonzalo also researches counter threat finance, including abuse of NPOs for terrorist financing, crime-enabled terrorist financing, and financing of right-wing extremism. He is part of Project CRAAFT (Collaboration, Research and Analysis Against Financing of Terrorism).

Prior to joining RUSI in 2022, Gonzalo worked as a legal advisor to victims of human trafficking for sexual exploitation, as well as a researcher of transnational organised crime in Spain and across Europe, collaborating extensively with non-profit organisations and law enforcement agencies.

He holds Bachelor’s Degrees in Law and International Relations from the University of Deusto, and an MSc in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics, where his dissertation examined combatting Al-Shabaab through the targeting of its illicit sources of financing.