Martin Plaut
Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies
Senior customs adviser/expert, Royal Oman Police
With 30+ years of law enforcement experience, Mark Pegler is currently the International Advisor to the Customs Directorate of the Royal Oman Police. As part of his role addressing national and transnational risks across borders, Mark designed and implemented the risk management engine of the Integrated Customs Management System for Oman Customs and provides capacity building in the area of risk management. Mark is also instrumental in the current multi- million pound development assistance programme provided by UKTI- UK Border Force in strengthening Oman Customs law enforcement capacity. He currently sits as the customs adviser to the anti-money laundering /capital flight group of the Central Bank of Oman.
During a 23 year operational service with HM Customs and Excise, Mark served overseas on missions related to strengthening law enforcement activity and combatting organized crime and commercial fraud in Belize (1995-96) and Mozambique (1997-2000). Subsequently Mark served as Customs operational manager Angola Customs Modernization programme (2001-2005); risk adviser and project manager under the EU assistance programme to Indonesia Customs (2007); country manager (Crown Agents) and customs risk adviser to Government of Yemen- Sanaa, (2008); anti-smuggling adviser to the government of Bulgaria (2009) and as a member of the EULEX- Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (2010-14). Mark has also worked as an adviser to the Federal Customs Bureau of Russia.
He holds a Bachelor’s Degree (Hons) in International Relations (OU) and is a post graduate in both Religious Philosophy- East and West Thought (UWTSD) and Conflict and Development (OU). He also holds accreditation from World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for IPR enforcement management and UK-DCATS (2014) accreditation for protection of IPR.
With English as his native language, Mark is a level 4 Arabic speaker.
Mark is a member of Yemen Safe Passage Group; the Anglo- Omani Society; the Royal Society for Asian Affairs and the UK Anti-Counterfeiting Enforcement Group.