Nikos Passas is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, where he served for a number of years as Co-Director of the Institute for Security and Public Policy. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor at Beijing Normal University Law School and Chair of the Academic Council of the Anti-Corruption Academy in India. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Crime, Justice and Policing at the University of Birmingham, the International Panel of Advisors at the Institute for Australia India Engagement in Brisbane, the Board of Governors at the World City Hub in Mumbai, and the Board of Directors of Compliance and Capacity Skills International in New York. He has also served as Co-Chair of the Steering Committee for the University of Geneva Anti-Corruption Academy, Distinguished Practitioner in Financial Integrity and Senior Fellow of the Financial Integrity Institute at Case Western Reserve Law School, the Global Advisory Board of the Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (TRACIT), the Advisory Board of the Global Risk Profile in Geneva.
His law degree is from the Univ. of Athens (LL.B.), his Master’s from the University of Paris-Paris II (D.E.A.) and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh Faculty of Law. He is a member of the Athens Bar (Greece). He is fluent in 6 languages (English, Spanish, Greek, French, German, Italian) and plays classical guitar. He specializes in international criminal law and conventions, corruption, governance, ethics and compliance, illicit financial/trade flows, sanctions, informal fund transfers, remittances, terrorism, white-collar crime, financial regulation, human trafficking, and organized crime. He has published more than 250 articles, book chapters, reports and books in 15 languages.
He is the author of Legislative Guide for the Implementation of the UN Convention against Corruption, Legislative Guide for the Implementation of the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (2003 and 2015), IVTS and Criminal Organizations (1999) and editor of Transnational Financial Crimes (2013), The United Nations Convention against Corruption as a Way of Life (2007), International Crimes (2003), It’s Legal but It Ain’t Right: Harmful Social Consequences of Legal Industries 2004); Upperworld and Underworld in Cross-Border Crime (2002); Transnational Crime (1999), The Future of Anomie Theory (1997), and Organized Crime (1995), Informal Value Transfer Systems (IVTS) and Criminal Activities (2004). In addition, he has contributed to the United Nations Non-Proliferation Sanctions on Iran and North Korea: Practitioner's Compliance Handbook (2015), edited a volume on the Regulation of Informal remittance Systems for the IMF, co-authored a World Bank study into Migrant Labor Remittances in the South Asia Region, authored two reports to FinCEN on the trade in precious stones and metals and completed numerous studies on terrorism finance, procurement fraud, corruption asset recovery, the role and responsibility of anti-corruption authorities, as well as on governance, development and corruption international policy.
For 14 years, he served as editor-in-chief of the international journal Crime, Law and Social Change and continues to be associate editor in a number of journals in the US, Europe and Asia. He served as Chair of the Am. Soc. of Criminology International Division and as ASC’s liaison to the United Nations. He also served on the Board of Directors of the International Society of Criminology.
Passas offers training to law enforcement, intelligence, international organizations and private sector officials on regulatory, risk analysis, ethics and compliance, and financial crime subjects. He regularly serves as expert witness in court cases or public hearings and consults with law firms, financial institutions, private security and consulting companies and various organizations, including the WHO, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), OECD, OSCE, the IMF, the World Bank, the Council of Europe, other multilateral and bilateral institutions, the United Nations (ODC, Development Programme, Security Council, etc.), the Caribbean FATF, the European Union, the US National Academy of Sciences, research institutions and government agencies in all continents. His work with UNODC includes the design and initiation of the legal library of UNCAC-related national texts and the design and content of the UNCAC review mechanism software and checklist.
Passas has lectured in scores of Schools of Law, Business and Social Sciences in the USA, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, China, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Italy, India, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Japan, Macau, Mexico, Mongolia, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, S. Africa, S. Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uruguay. He has also given numerous lectures at international conferences, workshops and trainings in over 70 countries.
He served as Team Leader for a European Union Commission project on the control of proliferation/WMD finance. He organized the launching and coordinated a global inter-disciplinary academic initiative on anti-corruption courses and materials, supported by Northeastern Univ., UNODC, OECD, and the International Bar Association to reach out to universities and educational institutions around the world. He has been Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies and Law School, University of Birmingham, Visiting Professor at Vienna University of Applied Sciences for Management & Communication’s Center for Corporate Governance & Business Ethics, an INSPIRE Fellow at Tufts University’s Institute of Global Leadership, Consortium Member and Distinguished Inaugural Professor of Collective Action, Business Ethics and Compliance at the International Anti-Corruption Academy, Vienna, (where he helped launch and teach a global anticorruption professional MA degree and create a second MA degree on compliance and collective action), Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Visiting Professor at the Basel Institute on Governance and Corruption Program Director at the Ethics and Compliance Officer Association (ECOA). The projects in which he is involved in 2025 revolve around international regulation and control of illicit financial and commercial flows, corruption and the deadly train crash in Greece, “lawful but awful” practices, the detection and disruption of illegal trade in medical products, ethics, health and AI issues, quality of governance and corruption issues in different countries. Since September 2020 Prof. Passas is leading a consortium for research and action against illicit and counterfeit medical supply chains with financial support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF). This project received an additional $1million funding in 2022 to continue and expand work for another 4 years.