AML

Abubakar Malami, Nigeria’s former attorney general and minister of justice, has been charged with 16 counts of money laundering and conspiracy involving billions of naira, Reuters reported.

Malaysia’s High Court sentenced ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak to 15 years in prison after convicting him on 25 charges of money laundering and abuse of power linked to the looting of the 1MDB sovereign-wealth fund, The Wall Street Journal reported.

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an order directing the federal government to loosen marijuana regulations and accelerate a long-stalled effort to reclassify the drug, a step that could mark one of the biggest federal shifts on cannabis policy in decades, Reuters reported.

Australian regulators took coordinated action on Thursday to address weaknesses in the anti-money laundering and risk-management controls of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, including the imposition of a A$50 million operational-risk capital charge. 

The EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) on Thursday published draft technical standards intended to unify how financial supervisors assess risks and how the supervisory body will select the “most complex” high-risk institutions and groups it will directly oversee. 

Authorities raided the residential properties and offices of French Culture Minister Rachida Dati on Thursday as part of a corruption probe linked to her previous tenure as a member of the European Parliament, Bloomberg reported. 

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) has filed civil proceedings in the High Court against ASB Bank, alleging breaches of core requirements under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Act dating from at least December 2019. 

The Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI) division identified $10.6 billion in tax and other financial crimes in the federal fiscal year ending September 30, a rise of nearly 16% from the prior year. 

Nationwide Building Society has been hit with a £44-million fine by the UK’s financial regulator over longstanding weaknesses in its systems to detect and prevent financial crime, including failures that allowed tens of millions of pounds in fraudulent Covid furlough payments to pass through a customer’s account.

Spanish prosecutors are investigating whether Madrid-based airline Plus Ultra used a €53-million Covid-era bailout to launder money embezzled from Venezuela through a web of companies in France, Switzerland and Spain, according to a report in El País.