Thomson Reuters joins fight against human trafficking

Companies and financial institutions can become unwitting participants in slavery due to a lack of understanding of their suppliers, partners or contractors: although they may have a thorough understanding of their immediate contractors, sub-contractors may expose companies to further risk, the company said in an announcement.

“It is astonishing that more than two centuries after the United Kingdom outlawed slavery that this practice can endure across the world,” said David Craig, president of Thomson Reuters’ largest division, financial and risk. “It is reported that the ‘cost’ of a slave is lower now than it has been for three centuries - a genuinely chilling thought.

“It is right, then, that we build on our 10 years experience in third party risk to address this issue. This initiative brings together the best in 21st century Know Your Third Party technology to track and ultimately unmask the beneficiaries of this vast criminal enterprise. Our partnerships announced today with Verité and Liberty Asia demonstrate a completely new way to engage with the companies which are on the front line, using data to provide them with new insight into one of the great crimes of our age.”

Verité is a non-profit organisation dedicated to ensuring that people around the world work under safe, fair and legal conditions. As part of this effort, Thomson Reuters will provide expert guidance and data analysis to uncover links between labour trafficking in supply chains and other crimes such as corruption.

“It's clear that the under-the-radar and under-regulated activities of labour brokers in global supply chains are the biggest risk facing migrant workers and the brands whose products they make," said Dan Viederman, CEO of Verité. "Verité is very pleased to be working with Thomson Reuters to strengthen the fight against forced labour,” 

Liberty Asia, which is dedicated to providing a more effective and coordinated response to slavery, is collaborating with Thomson Reuters on data and information gathering about human trafficking and modern slavery. Thomson Reuters and Liberty Asia will also work together to train analysts and investigators in gathering this data.

“We have identified the global anti-money laundering regime as a powerful tool in the combat and disruption of human trafficking and modern day slavery,” said Duncan Jepson, chief executive officer and founder of Liberty Asia. “Our partnership with Thomson Reuters is an ideal platform to bring this intelligence to the financial sector. Already our work together on typologies has yielded the inclusion of hundreds of convicted criminals in the World-Check database.”

World-Check is Thomson Reuters' source of intelligence on politically-exposed persons (PEPs) and heightened risk individuals and organisations globally. World-Check data aids compliance with legislation relating to anti-money laundering, threat financing, anti-corruption, organised crime, third party risk and other financial crimes control. World-Check contains over 12,000 profiles linked to child and slave labour, migrant smuggling, sex trafficking and human trafficking.”

Thomson Reuters' new partnerships were announced at the inaugural Trust Forum Asia in Hong Kong, organised by the company and the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The event brings together more than 200 financial and legal experts, government officials, academics, activists and NGOs to discuss the exploitation of domestic labour and the widespread use of displaced, impoverished and trafficked individuals in Asia’s fishing industry.

Last week in London the Thomson Reuters Foundation brought together some of the world’s leading financial institutions with law enforcement agencies to establish a working group which will combat human trafficking and modern day slavery.

Last November, Thomson Reuters announced at its fifth Pan-Asian Regulatory Summit in Hong Kong that for every new World-Check customer it would make a donation to the Thomson Reuters Foundation to fight modern slavery and exploitation. Thomson Reuters has now donated some $50,000 to fighting slavery and the programme is on track to double this amount by the end of 2015. ■