Mr. Jean-François Thony
Jean-François Thony is the President of the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights and the former Prosecutor General of the Court of Appeal of Rennes.
He began his career in the French Judiciary as Examining Judge (juge d’instruction), Deputy Prosecutor (substitut du procureur), and Chief Prosecutor (procureur de la République). He joined the United Nations International Drug Control Programme in early 1991 as Senior Legal Adviser and later became Programme Manager of the UN Global Program against Money Laundering. In July 2000, he was appointed as Judge, Court of Appeal of Versailles (France).
He joined the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in July 2002 to serve as Assistant General Counsel and Head of the Financial Integrity Group, with the responsibility of overseeing and coordinating all anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) activities of the IMF. He was appointed in September 2007 as Director of the French “Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature” (National School for the Judiciary), where he served for more than four years. In February 2012, he was appointed as Prosecutor General of the Court of Appeal of Alsace, in Colmar (France).
In January 2017 he was elected as the Chairman of the National Conference of Prosecutors General in France.
Jean-François Thony is also Executive Vice-President of the International Association of Penal Law, a member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Prosecutors (IAP), a member of the Academic Committee of the United Nations International Anti-Corruption Academy (IACA, Laxenburg, Austria), a member of the EC Expert Group on European Criminal Policy (European Commission, Brussels), and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Research Group on Financial Crime (DELFICO-CEFTI), Aix-Marseille University. He has published several studies and research papers on the issues of money laundering and terrorism financing. He was awarded the distinctions of Officier de l’Ordre de la Légion d’honneur, Chevalier de l’Ordre national du mérite and of Chevalier de l’Ordre des palmes académiques.
He is married and the father of four children.
