Government

Russia has emerged as Syria’s dominant oil supplier, with shipments rising about 75 percent to roughly 60,000 barrels per day this year despite Damascus’s pivot toward the West and lingering public anger over Moscow’s military backing of ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.

The United States imposed sanctions on former Democratic Republic of the Congo President Joseph Kabila, accusing him of supporting armed groups that Washington says have fueled conflict and instability in eastern Congo.

A federal jury on Friday convicted former Republican U.S. Rep. David Rivera of Florida and political consultant Esther Nuhfer of secretly working as foreign agents for Venezuela’s government in 2017 and 2018, capping a five-week trial that featured testimony from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) placed Austria in enhanced follow-up after finding the country’s framework for investigating and prosecuting money laundering remains weak more than a decade after similar concerns were first raised.

U.S. prosecutors charged the governor of Mexico’s Sinaloa state, the mayor of Culiacan, a sitting Mexican senator, and seven others with running a drug-trafficking conspiracy with the Sinaloa Cartel.

World Liberty Financial, the Trump family-linked crypto venture, announced a deal in November to enable its USD1 stablecoin on a crypto network whose flagship resort project was controlled by two men the U.S. government had sanctioned weeks earlier as alleged operatives of an Asian scam ring.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy returned to the witness stand on Wednesday in his appeal against a conviction for illegally accepting Libyan funds for his 2007 presidential campaign, contradicting two sworn statements from his onetime right-hand man, Claude Guéant.

OFAC designated 35 entities and individuals it said help run Iran’s shadow-banking system, focusing on private companies known as “rahbars” that move money for sanctioned Iranian banks through foreign shell companies and front-company accounts.

Greece’s ruling New Democracy party has launched an aggressive campaign against European Chief Prosecutor Laura Codruța Kövesi over her office’s investigation into a corruption scandal involving hundreds of millions of euros in European Union farm subsidies.

The United States Mint has for years purchased gold originating from illegal mines controlled by a Colombian drug cartel, violating a federal law requiring that its coins be made from newly mined American gold.