On 1st April 1994, a public holiday, I walked into my office next door to the Court in Old Bailey and picked up the mail. A thick envelope attracted my attention: it was The Law Society's notes on The Money Laundering Regulations 1993 which came into force on that very day.

That envelope changed the next 30 years of my life and the lives of many others. It is now shaping the lives of many who were not then born.

It was the genesis of my determination to interpret and explain complex stuff relating to financial crime risk and compliance in a simple way, as I had done for clients and courts in other fields since I was 15 years old.

It was important work that has taken me around the world many times talking to financial institutions and governments, put me in harm's way more than once, led to a broadcast and print media profile both as interviewee and commentator and to a growing list of books aimed for the professional market and, in some cases, for the man and woman in the street going about their ordinary, lawful, lives and put at risk by criminals.

And yet, one has to ask: given the current state of regulatory cost, complexity and fear at the expense of actual risk assessment of financial crime, was 1 April 1994 the day I started on a Quixotic Quest, a fool's errand?