Covered Institutions

An entrepreneur who used ties to prominent academics to raise nearly $27 million for a cluster of startups ran what U.S. regulators described as an “IP-rich” and “Ponzi-like” scheme that recycled new investor money to repay earlier backers while funding a lavish personal lifestyle.

Binance failed for months to cut ties with a payment-processing vendor despite a series of red flags that pointed to possible sanctions evasion and money laundering involving transfers later linked to Iran.

New details have emerged about the seizure of two armored bank vehicles by Hungarian officials earlier this month, including allegations that the then-detained Ukrainian bank workers were beaten and injected with an unknown substance.

China remains the destination for about 90 percent of Iranian crude exports despite a recent U.S. sanctions waiver intended to release previously restricted oil onto global markets.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has discussed ways to tighten the Treasury’s oversight of the Federal Reserve by borrowing elements from the Bank of England model, in a move that could significantly reshape the central bank’s relationship with the government.

Italian authorities have seized assets worth about €20 million in Tuscany that investigators say were purchased with money embezzled from actor Ursula Andress.

South Africa’s national police commissioner, Fannie Masemola, has been charged in a widening corruption investigation linked to the award of a 360 million rand ($21 million) police health-services contract to a businessman already under scrutiny for tender fraud.

Two Chinese pharmaceutical firms and six Chinese nationals are facing charges after prosecutors said they were part of a drug-trafficking network that provided material support to the Cártel del Golfo (CDG), a Mexican criminal syndicate that was designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

It was a tiny Swiss bank, headquartered in an open-plan office close to Lake Zurich and little known abroad. But MBaer Merchant Bank AG would sometimes charge clients 10 times the normal rate to process payments.

Britain’s government will cap political donations from British citizens living overseas at £100,000 a year and temporarily ban cryptocurrency donations under emergency election law changes aimed at countering foreign interference.