Covered Institutions

The UK government will examine the role of cryptocurrency donations in politics as part of a wider review of party-financing rules triggered by a bribery case involving a Reform UK politician, Bloomberg reported.

Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman and other oligarchs are exploiting European investment treaties to sue Ukraine for hundreds of millions, and in some cases billions, of dollars, according to a new investigation by Follow the Money.

PayPal has applied to form a bank that would offer business loans and interest-bearing savings accounts, a move that would deepen the payments company’s push into core banking services, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) has filed civil proceedings in the High Court against ASB Bank, alleging breaches of core requirements under the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Act dating from at least December 2019. 

A Russian “shadow fleet” tanker sanctioned by the UK, EU and U.S. continued transporting oil in late 2025, underscoring what an investigation by Follow the Money describes as the limited impact Western measures have had on the cash flow Moscow earns from crude exports.

The Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI) division identified $10.6 billion in tax and other financial crimes in the federal fiscal year ending September 30, a rise of nearly 16% from the prior year. 

Nationwide Building Society has been hit with a £44-million fine by the UK’s financial regulator over longstanding weaknesses in its systems to detect and prevent financial crime, including failures that allowed tens of millions of pounds in fraudulent Covid furlough payments to pass through a customer’s account.

Spanish prosecutors are investigating whether Madrid-based airline Plus Ultra used a €53-million Covid-era bailout to launder money embezzled from Venezuela through a web of companies in France, Switzerland and Spain, according to a report in El País.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has conditionally approved five national trust bank charters for firms focused on digital assets, in a move that brings more crypto-related activity into the federal banking system but under supervisory constraints.

Major U.S. chipmakers Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Texas Instruments, along with a Warren Buffett–owned electronics distributor, are facing a series of lawsuits accusing them of failing to prevent their semiconductors from ending up in Russian missiles and drones used to attack civilians in Ukraine.