Covered Institutions

A Spanish police corruption investigation has widened into a narcotics and money-laundering scandal that links a senior economic-crimes investigator and a son of the Duke of Seville to an international drug-trafficking ring, The Times reported. 

Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein made an early investment into Coinbase Global Inc. in 2014, putting roughly $3 million into the crypto exchange, according to emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice and reviewed by Decrypt.

The Trump administration is preparing to issue a broad Treasury Department license as soon as this week that would allow companies to pump oil in Venezuela, a move aimed at easing U.S. sanctions and jump-starting investment in the country’s decaying energy infrastructure. 

U.S. investigators are examining whether specific cryptocurrency platforms have helped Iranian officials and state-linked actors evade sanctions as crypto activity in Iran surges, a blockchain researcher with direct knowledge of Treasury’s concerns told Reuters.

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 Thai military said it has recovered extensive evidence of transnational online fraud from a Cambodian “scam compound” seized during border clashes last year, including target lists, scam scripts, and equipment used to disguise operations, Reuters said. 

An Abu Dhabi royal secretly backed a $500-million deal to buy nearly half of a Trump-linked cryptocurrency venture months before the United Arab Emirates secured expanded access to tightly controlled U.S. artificial-intelligence chips, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

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.