Elena has extensive international experience in Compliance and Anti-Money Laundering with global financial institutions with roles based in Switzerland, Spain, Mexico and Poland, with special interest in detecting money laundering patterns of Latin-American and Russian organized crime groups, as well as prevention of embezzlement of funds proceeding from public contracts.
In her current role with Banco Santander, she is responsible for leading Financial Crime Compliance team covering Sanctions Screening, Transaction Monitoring, Investigations and Periodic Reviews.
Prior to joining Santander Group in 2018 in Madrid, she was with Citigroup from 2009 until the end of 2017, covering the role of AML Global Investigation Unit Senior Compliance with Citi in Mexico as her last position, working on complex investigative projects on organized crime and corruption proceeds laundering in Latin American Region. Her main achievements in this role include development of investigative projects focused on detection of money laundering schemes used by Russian organized crime applied for Latin American drug-cartels and public embezzlement project aimed to identify corruption schemes in Construction sector in Mexico.
Before that, Elena was AML Quality Assurance Team Leader in Mexico and AML Subject Matter Expert (SME) for EMEA Region in Warsaw, as well with Citigroup. In the SME role in Poland, she was supporting the migration of the AML Operations processes for virtual units in Switzerland, Russia and Ukraine.
She graduated with a master’s degree in International Economics from Lazarski School of Commerce and Law based in Warsaw in 2009 and holds a bachelor’s degree in finance management from Higher School of Economics, Russia. Elena has Advanced AML Certification by International Compliance Association and collaborated for the book The Untold Stories of Financial Crime by Maurren Mutua. She is fluent in 6 languages, including her mother-tongue Russian, Spanish, Polish, English, Portuguese and French.
