KYC

The organizer of New York City’s annual SantaCon bar crawl was arrested on wire-fraud charges on Wednesday after federal prosecutors alleged he diverted money that was supposed to go to charity and used it instead for personal expenses.

A U.S. appeals court on Monday ruled that Bank of America cannot be sued over its closure of an Iranian American customer’s account after finding the bank was protected by a federal liability shield for actions taken in good faith to comply with U.S. sanctions laws. 

UBS AG is facing renewed pressure from the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee over its handling of an investigation into possible Nazi-linked accounts at Credit Suisse, after the panel’s chairman accused the Swiss bank of withholding documents and obstructing a full review.

The Internal Revenue Service has lost thousands of enforcement staffers since President Donald Trump returned to office. The cuts are fueling fears, and in some cases, hopes, that the agency’s capacity to enforce U.S. tax laws is diminished.

Dutch police have arrested eight men on suspicion of identity fraud, forgery, and cybercrime in a nationwide operation targeting users of VerifTools, a fake-ID platform that investigators say generated forged documents for criminals around the world. 

Indonesian authorities have named former commodities trader Mohammad Riza Chalid as a suspect in a second corruption investigation tied to crude oil and fuel procurement, broadening a probe that is renewing scrutiny of longstanding practices in the country’s energy market.

A donor to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is the registered manager and shareholder of a Dubai-based company that previously had business ties to an Iranian conglomerate later placed under U.S. sanctions.

Canadian penny stock trader John Babikian, once dubbed the “Wolf of Montreal,” obtained a new legal identity, secured residency in Latvia, and bought a luxury apartment in Dubai after disappearing from public view following a U.S. securities settlement.

Two criminal trials opening in Madrid this week have put renewed focus on allegations of kickbacks, illicit party financing, and broader political corruption in Spain.

UBS Group AG failed to convince a U.S. judge to clarify a 1999 settlement over Holocaust-era claims against Swiss banks, a setback for the lender as it seeks to head off potential new financial claims tied to Nazi victims’ assets.