Alain Damais is an executive managing director at K2 Integrity, and head of its Riyadh office. With more than 25 years of experience, mainly in fighting financial crimes, he supports Middle Eastern governments, regulators, and other public and private financial institutions in maintaining compliance and financial transparency in line with international standards and best practices.
Alain was previously CEO of France’s National Council of Judicial Administrators and Judicial Liquidators, and CEO of a private industrial group. He also served as Inspector of Finance within the French government’s Inspection Générale des Finances (IGF). In this role he led a wide range of advisory missions for the French Presidency, the Ministry of Finance, and numerous executive bodies.
Alain also served as a senior official within the French Finance Ministry, where he led French efforts in anti-money laundering, counterterrorist financing, and anti-corruption. In addition, he led the ministry’s Multilateral Development Aid division, represented France in the G20 Development Working Group, and chaired the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion. Prior to that, he was an inspector at IGF, where, among other missions, he actively participated in the rescue of the French banking sector in the midst of the global financial crisis in 2008 and in the preparation for the Mutual Evaluation of France by FATF in 2010.
Before his time at IGF, Alain was the Executive Secretary of FATF, Head of the FATF Secretariat, where he led the Mutual Evaluation of the United States (2005–06) and of the United Kingdom (2006–07). Prior to that, he was a senior financial sector specialist at the World Bank, where he drove the creation of the institution’s AML/CFT program in 2002, assessing countries’ vulnerabilities and delivering technical assistance to the bank’s clients.
Earlier in his career, Alain was a senior member of the French Delegation to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), to the G7 Working Group in Financial Crimes, and to the Caribbean FATF. He also served as head of the French Delegation to the Asia-Pacific Group on Anti-Money Laundering and to the OECD Working Group on Bribery. He participated in numerous assessments of countries around the world, and in the negotiation of the OECD Convention against Bribery of Foreign Public Officials and the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.
Alain holds an LL.M. in business law, an M.P.A. in political science, and an M.I.A. in international relations, all from the University of Paris I – Pantheon/Sorbonne.
