Sarah Paquet, Director and CEO of FINTRAC, is an active member of the international community of FIUs. Ms. Paquet seeks to find meaningful solutions through her recent appointment as Chair of the IEWG. With a strong belief in the power of teamwork and collaboration when addressing serious issues that require solutions from a broad collection of stakeholders, her experience within the Government of Canada (GoC) underpins this belief.  This perspective equally applies to international collaboration, where information sharing is critical to understanding shared threats in money laundering and terrorist financing globally. The ability to harness the unique perspectives of Egmont members is key to finding a solution to these shared threats. 

Ms. Paquet is a lawyer by trade, having earned Civil Law and Common Law degrees from the University of Ottawa. Ms. Paquet started her federal public service career in 1997 and has extensive experience in leading complex initiatives involving multiple stakeholders within the GoC. Ms. Paquet played a key role in developing a Service Strategy for internal services within the federal public service, which helped ingrain client service excellence when federal support partners. Ms. Paquet was also responsible for enabling major GoC IT-enabled business solutions such as delivering a software system called My GCHR – a new GoC service delivery model for human resources. Ms. Paquet was instrumental in developing the GoC renewed IT infrastructure transformation plan, enabling digital services to Canadians.

Ms. Paquet strongly believes in collaboration; her motto is ‘One Team, One Plan, One Success.’ As noted within the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing community, combatting financial crimes requires global commitment and collaboration. Her experience and belief in teamwork, diversity and inclusivity provide an advantageous asset to her position as Chair of the IEWG.

Vision 

“The IEWG will continue to explore, identify and understand new global means and methods of ML/TF while at the same time exploring innovative methods that could assist FIUs in meeting their mandate.” 

What do you hope to accomplish as the WG Chair?

“Through sustained collaboration, expand the knowledge and abilities of FIUs to combat ML/TF by focusing on projects and deliverables that are of maximum importance to FIUs worldwide. To keep pace with the rapid developments in ML/TF, encourage the project teams within the IEWG to produce high-quality results within reasonable timeframes.”

What projects are you most excited about?

“In a world that is quickly transforming due to innovation and technology, digital transformation is a faced paced environment where FIUs need to be made aware of significant developments.”