KYC

Erebor Bank, a startup backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, has pitched senior Venezuelan officials on restoring the sanctioned country’s access to the U.S. financial system.

Brazilian lawmaker and presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro negotiated $24 million in financing from jailed banker Daniel Vorcaro to bankroll a biographical film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Multiple major German banks have abruptly frozen the accounts of Russian and Belarusian nationals living in Germany, demanding fresh proof of residency and leaving long-term customers without access to their money.

A tiny New Zealand financial services firm processed millions of dollars in transfers for high-risk clients including a convicted U.S. fraudster, a Belarusian oligarch close to Aleksandr Lukashenko, and a British man later convicted in Europe’s “cum-ex” tax fraud.

Monaco’s financial markets watchdog has fined UBS €6 million for “numerous serious breaches” in anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing controls.

Ecuador’s financial regulators have launched a joint probe into possible money laundering at Banco Guayaquil, the country’s third-largest bank by net profit.

China’s top financial regulator has quietly told the country’s largest banks to suspend new loans to five Chinese refiners recently sanctioned by the United States over their ties to Iranian oil, even as Beijing publicly orders companies to ignore those same U.S. measures.

Tabcorp, Australia’s biggest listed bookmaker, disclosed that the country’s financial-crimes watchdog AUSTRAC has opened a formal investigation into whether it was complying with anti-money-laundering (AML) rules and properly monitoring its customers.

Hungarian police have opened a misappropriation and money-laundering investigation into the companies of Gyula Balásy, one of the country’s most prominent media and advertising figures and a long-time architect of Viktor Orbán’s government propaganda campaigns.

A network of TikTok accounts utilizing coded emojis, faction nicknames, and narco ballads are advertising the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) in an apparent attempt to recruit new members for one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations, according to a report released this week by social-media analysis firm Graphika.