KYC

Spain’s National Court has charged former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero with money laundering, influence peddling, document falsification, and related criminal offenses stemming from the government’s €53-million pandemic-era bailout of Plus Ultra airlines.

Alex Saab, the businessman widely seen as the financial fixer for ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, was charged with money laundering in federal court in Miami on Monday.

The president of South America’s soccer federation faces an ethics complaint alleging he took millions of dollars from funds the body recovered after the 2015 global soccer corruption scandal.

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.