Lenders

A United Nations committee has approved exemptions from North Korea sanctions to allow a new round of humanitarian aid projects to proceed, Reuters reported on Friday, citing an unnamed diplomatic source. 

The U.S. Justice Department is increasingly targeting corrupt Mexican money brokers in an attempt to disrupt the financial networks used to launder cartel drug proceeds via cryptocurrency and other means, the Associated Press reported.

Crypto companies are pitching new concessions to banks in an effort to keep a sweeping digital-asset market-structure bill moving in the Senate, with proposals that would give community banks a larger role in the stablecoin ecosystem.

The European Union’s new Anti-Money Laundering Authority said it is on track to become fully operational in 2028, setting out a multi-year plan that flags emerging illicit-finance threats ranging from crypto-assets to “novel payment channels.”

A U.S. senator said late Monday that an ongoing investigation into Credit Suisse’s historical ties to Nazi Germany has identified “hundreds” of accounts with potential links to Nazi-era officials and industrialists, including fresh evidence of the bank’s relationship with the SS, Bloomberg reported.

African elites and companies are increasingly routing money through Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong as traditional offshore centers such as Switzerland tighten scrutiny, according to a new University of Oxford working paper reported by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. 

The U.S. Justice Department’s latest release of documents on its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein includes the personally identifiable information of dozens of sex-trafficking victims, according to new analysis by The Wall Street Journal. 

Mexico’s sweeping crackdown on electronic cigarettes is accelerating a shift in the country’s $1.5-billion vape-pen market toward organized crime, according to ABC News.

A recent guilty plea by a former TD Bank teller who helped move millions in suspicious funds through the U.S. banking system is an illustration of how easily things can go wrong when frontline staff face few internal anti-money laundering (AML) controls, according to a new report by the American Banker. 

The Trump administration has granted confidential licenses to two of the world’s largest oil traders, Vitol and Trafigura, to broker sales of Venezuelan crude, despite both firms’ recent brushes with bribery prosecutions tied to oil deals elsewhere, The Washington Post reported.