UA/SAS Research Partnership Paves Way for Investigating Money Laundering

Dr. Mike Hardin

Money laundering, according to news accounts, is the world's third largest business, a business so large that it is nearly impossible to even estimate the volume. The United Nations Crime and Justice Database describes the crime being officially recorded at national levels in more than 80 countries.

A recently negotiated partnership with SAS, a leading software supplier to the financial services industry, has engaged The University of Alabama's Culverhouse College of Commerce for business research on a global scale, research that could be part of an effort to slow the pace of money laundering by terrorist groups.

A research team, composed of a dozen UA students in statistics and data mining and headed by Dr. J. Michael Hardin, professor of statistics and a specialist in data mining, has taken on the role of investigating questions posed by financial institutions using SAS software to detect money laundering, score credit reports and perform other data mining tasks. A team from SAS, Anne Milley and Jerry Oglesby, were on campus recently to meet with Hardin and other Culverhouse representatives and students.

Full Story — UA/SAS Research