Nonprofits

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.

Italy has passed a sweeping review of its anti-money-laundering regime but must urgently fix a suspended corporate ownership registry and tighten oversight of non-financial businesses, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said in a report published on Thursday.

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 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.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday announced two new sanctions actions targeting financing and revenue-generation networks tied to Hamas and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Guernsey’s government is weighing new transparency rules that would let approved applicants access information on the beneficial owners of companies registered on the island.

The Council of Europe has agreed to remove the diplomatic immunity granted to Thorbjoern Jagland, clearing the way for Norwegian police to investigate the former secretary general’s newly uncovered relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a Lebanon-based gold exchange company and a network of individuals behind a procurement and commodities shipping scheme purportedly tied to Hezbollah. 

Jack Lang, a former French culture minister and long-time president of the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris, has resigned from the post after Mediapart reported new details about financial and business ties between his family and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. 

UBS AG opened accounts for Ghislaine Maxwell in early 2014 and went on to manage as much as $19 million for her in the years before she was convicted for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually traffic teenage girls, Reuters reported.