When the Accounting Research Institute was accorded the higher institutions' centre of excellence (HICoE) status in 2010 by the Ministry of Higher Education Ministry Malaysia, it was entrusted to drive a niche research area in Islamic Financial Criminology (IFC). Fundamentally, IFC comprises three basic research areas: (i) research related to developing new or innovating existing Islamic Finance Products; (ii) research to strengthen the governance and integrity of the Islamic finance sector and (iii) research to mitigate financial leakages in organisations, including the Islamic Finance sector. The main aim of the IFC research agenda is to establish a sustainable Islamic Finance sector for Malaysia and possibly globally. In driving the new knowledge corpus in Islamic Financial Criminology, ARI divides its research program into four main clusters: (1)
Governance & Shariah Compliance; (2) Corporate Integrity System & Ethics; (3) Anti-Money Laundering & Mitigation; and (4) Methodologies in Financial Fraud Detection &
Investigation. In 2017, we will include another research project - Decision Support System- to integrate all these clusters.
