SARs

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have jointly concluded that deliberate de-risking campaigns by traditional Baltic banks have driven large-scale client migration toward Lithuanian fintech firms, concentrating money laundering risk in a single digital institution.

Financial-crime authorities across the Middle East and North Africa hold powers that look adequate on paper but fail in practice, with anti-corruption agencies unable to freeze assets, prosecutors acting as political gatekeepers, and high-risk sectors filing almost no suspicious activity reports.

Jeffrey Epstein’s office relied on a dedicated team at American Express Co. to book travel for dozens of women, in some cases arranging sham itineraries designed to help them obtain visas.

Epstein’s Centurion relationship manager and more than a dozen American Express colleagues booked, canceled, and rebooked flights for women whose travel patterns and supporting documents two human-trafficking experts say should have raised red flags.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday issued an alert urging financial institutions to step up their detection of money laundering, sanctions evasion, and digital-asset transfers tied to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

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.

ING Belgium has agreed to pay a €1.6 million settlement over alleged failures to report suspicious transactions linked to former European Commissioner Didier Reynders.

The Trump administration’s decision to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug marks a milestone for the cannabis industry, but experts and executives say it falls well short of ending the sector’s longstanding exile from the mainstream financial system.

Canada’s financial intelligence agency has issued a bulletin warning banks and other institutions to be on alert for money laundering linked to an escalating extortion campaign targeting South Asian diaspora communities, particularly in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario.