New research by Miles Kellerman explores the politics of surveillance in combating transnational illicit finance

New research from DPIR alumnus Dr Miles Kellerman provides insight into insider trading and market manipulation perpetrated across borders.

In his paper ‘Supranational detectives? Transnational market abuse and the politics of surveillance delegation in the EU’, published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Dr Kellerman explores how regulators cooperate to identify this crime.

He highlights one option is to empower an international agency to surveil multiple markets simultaneously but argues, however, that regulators with exclusive national surveillance powers will reject this form of cooperation to protect their interests – even if they believe it would be a more efficient approach to detection.

And he stresses the importance of the public paying greater attention to how such crimes are identified – through surveillance – in improving our capacity to combat illicit finance.

Dr Kellerman said: “We all love to read scandalous news stories about white-collar crime. But we rarely think about how those crimes are identified: surveillance.

“The exclusive capacity to monitor transactions is powerful, and regulators and private firms are engaged in political battles over who should wield that power.”

Dr Kellerman completed the research for his paper, based on his doctoral dissertation and partly funded by a DPIR travel grant, while he was a DPhil candidate.

He completed his DPhil in International Relations at the University of Oxford in 2020. He currently works for a global consultancy firm and has previously worked in consultancy and banking, focusing on the detection of market manipulation, money laundering, and other methods of illicit finance.

His academic research has been published in Regulation & Governance, the Journal of European Public Policy, and the Review of International Organizations.