Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of our witnesses for helping to guide our committee through this study. Your testimony has been very helpful.
Mr. Browder, I'd like to start with you. It was quite an eye-opening figure when you mentioned the trillion dollars that the Putin regime has stolen from the Russian people and which you've said is held in various countries in the west.
You have a significant amount of experience in the banking sector. You know how people can use intricate ways of hiding their wealth, of using various holding companies and so on. Canada has had its own problems. We've coined the term “snow-washing” here in Canada because of the ease with which people can set up shell companies.
While there have been significant announcements recently, such as creating a beneficial ownership registry and, hopefully, in the near future, the creation of a financial crimes agency, I guess what I'd like to ask you is this: From your perspective, how can countries take the lead on this? How easy is it to employ forensic accountants to really try to uncover where the oligarchs have their wealth held? Do nation-states have the ability to do that easily if they put their mind to it?