Gabriel I. Hidalgo has over 25 years of legal and compliance experience as a senior compliance officer, BSA/AML regulatory examiner, and trusted advisor. His legal and compliance expertise includes creating, assessing, implementing, and managing regulatory compliance risk controls for all types of financial institutions including traditional banks, virtual asset exchanges and issuers, and fintechs.
Mr. Hidalgo spent the last seven years in managing director roles with two risk advisory consulting firms. He worked closely with clients on their regulatory requirement needs; designing and implementing regulator ready compliance programs in multiple jurisdictions; and advising on industry best practices.
Mr. Hidalgo’s in-depth background includes serving as chief compliance officer for Noble Bank International and Community Federal Savings Bank. At Noble Bank, he led compliance teams for all banking operations and developed and implemented a compliance program platform that successfully on-boarded and monitored customers focused on virtual asset and fintech client segments. During his tenure with Community Federal Savings Bank, Mr. Hidalgo led compliance for BSA/AML and Sanctions as well as consumer compliance for emerging foreign fintechs provided their products and services to U.S. customers.
Additionally, Mr. Hidalgo was the first global head of compliance for itBit (now known as Paxos), a virtual asset exchange that received the first financial institutional charter provided to a virtual asset service provider within the U.S. He also served as senior legal counsel for the Regulatory and Investigations Group at HSBC where he liaised with examiners from various regulatory agencies; managed communications and engagement between the independent monitorship team and the Bank; and conducted internal investigations related to fraud, ethics, and BSA/AML/economic sanctions issues.
On the regulatory side, Mr. Hidalgo spent four years with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), initially as a senior bank examiner for BSA/AML and sanctions exams and then as the legal and compliance specialist embedded on the FRBNY Deutsche Bank team as the lead for regulatory compliance and legal issue review. He was also selected by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council to train examiners from other regulatory agencies, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the FDIC and state banking agencies.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Hidalgo held compliance and legal roles at Morgan Stanley, Capital One Bank, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services, Casa de Cambio Delgado, and Empire Insurance. He is a frequent presenter and panelist on topics related to cryptocurrencies, regulatory compliance, and blockchain.
Mr. Hidalgo is fluent in Spanish.
