KYC

Britain’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) has fined Apple Distribution International Ltd £390,000 for breaching Russian sanctions, saying the subsidiary of Apple instructed a UK bank to make two payments totaling £635,618.75 to a Russian streaming company owned by a designated entity.

The trial of Russian businessman Dmitry Klyuev, accused by French prosecutors of laundering proceeds of the $230 million Magnitsky Affair fraud through luxury purchases in France, opened in Paris on Monday. 

The Trump administration is weighing whether to designate Brazil’s two largest drug gangs as terrorist organizations, a step that could expand the U.S. sanctions toolkit to include financial restrictions on the groups and their associates.

UBS AG processed an $8-million transfer for Ghislaine Maxwell in late 2019 that ultimately helped fund the cash purchase of the New Hampshire estate where she later went into hiding before her 2020 arrest.

The collapse of British property lender Market Financial Solutions (MFS) is exposing what Bloomberg described as an alleged collateral fraud that may leave lenders facing as much as £1.3 billion in losses and is raising new concerns about due diligence in private credit. 

An entrepreneur who used ties to prominent academics to raise nearly $27 million for a cluster of startups ran what U.S. regulators described as an “IP-rich” and “Ponzi-like” scheme that recycled new investor money to repay earlier backers while funding a lavish personal lifestyle.

Binance failed for months to cut ties with a payment-processing vendor despite a series of red flags that pointed to possible sanctions evasion and money laundering involving transfers later linked to Iran.

Britain’s government will cap political donations from British citizens living overseas at £100,000 a year and temporarily ban cryptocurrency donations under emergency election law changes aimed at countering foreign interference.

An Italian member of the European Parliament denied taking bribes from Huawei as lawmakers weigh whether to strip him of parliamentary immunity in a Belgian corruption investigation.

French financial prosecutors searched the Paris offices of private bank Edmond de Rothschild last week as part of an investigation into suspected bribery involving former employee and diplomat Fabrice Aidan, in a case linked to documents from the Jeffrey Epstein files.