Sri Lankan Expertise and AI Technology Take Centre Stage in Cambridge Launch of the Economic Crime & Geopolitics Index (ECGI)

The Economic Crime & Geopolitics Index (ECGI) was introduced at Jesus College, University of Cambridge, during the 43rd Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime, in Workshop 5, which focused on strategies to combat economic crime across South Asia and ASEAN.

The ECGI comes at a critical moment for the region. Public reporting has highlighted significant economic-crime concerns, including Sri Lanka’s alleged US$1 billion illegal outward-transfer scheme, ongoing corruption investigations linked to SriLankan Airlines, and large-scale allegations involving Philippine flood-control projects.

These cases underline a wider point: economic crime can no longer be understood only as corruption, fraud, or financial misconduct. It increasingly functions as a threat to governance, institutional resilience, public trust, and national security.

The ECGI is designed to move beyond periodic and perception-heavy indexes by reading economic crime as a living system. It integrates corruption depth, AML/CFT exposure, economic-crime severity, public response, civic trust, institutional confidence, reporting behaviour, and geopolitical drivers of foreign influence.

With Conscience IQ and Mithra technology embedded as enabling layers, ECGI can move beyond a comparative index toward a dynamic index engine.

Conscience IQ contributes measurement of human-factor signals such as corruption tolerance, civic trust, reporting fear, institutional fatigue, moral rationalisation, and public-response dynamics.

Mithra from Mimami based shelter zoom strengthens the evidence layer through tokenized documents, verifiable data lineage, chain of custody, audit-ready citations, and evidence-linked AI-assisted outputs.

Together, these capabilities allow ECGI to move from periodic measurement toward dynamic foresight: describing risk, rehearsing scenarios, and identifying how economic-crime systems may respond before institutional, financial, or civic harm escalates.

Initially focused on South Asia and ASEAN, the ECGI will expand to other regions and develop collaboration with leading economic-crime researchers, investigators, policymakers, and practitioners worldwide.

The Cambridge event also marked the launch of the ECGI introductory video, followed by a panel discussion chaired by Asanga Abeyagoonasekera, Senior Fellow, The Millennium Project, with Ms. Dzung Le, GlobePay Ltd.; Rt. Reverend Dr. Kirby de Lanerolle, Conscience IQ; and Archibald Prempeh, Volkswagen Financial Services (UK) Ltd.

The aim is not another league table. The aim is a dynamic index engine for economic-crime foresight, evidence integrity, civic resilience, and reform rehearsal.