Corruption

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.

A new report from a U.S. think tank says industrial-scale cyber-fraud operations embedded in Southeast Asia’s special economic zones now generate an estimated $50 billion to $75 billion per year, and should be considered a hybrid security threat rather than a consumer-protection issue.

Brazilian lawmaker and presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro negotiated $24 million in financing from jailed banker Daniel Vorcaro to bankroll a biographical film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies have named former presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak as an official suspect in a 460-million-hryvnia ($10.5 million) money-laundering scheme, marking a significant escalation in a graft investigation that has shaken President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government.

Ecuador’s financial regulators have launched a joint probe into possible money laundering at Banco Guayaquil, the country’s third-largest bank by net profit.

Brazilian federal police are targeting Senator Ciro Nogueira, a powerful ally of former President Jair Bolsonaro, as part of an expanding probe into the failed Banco Master.

Hungarian police have opened a misappropriation and money-laundering investigation into the companies of Gyula Balásy, one of the country’s most prominent media and advertising figures and a long-time architect of Viktor Orbán’s government propaganda campaigns.

Canada is moving to create a powerful new law enforcement agency dedicated to investigating and prosecuting financial crime, a step that places Ottawa on a sharply different course from Washington, where the Trump administration has scaled back federal fraud enforcement.

Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) on Friday secured a £10 million payment from defense contractor Ultra Electronics after the company accepted responsibility for failure to prevent bribery, the agency said in a statement.

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.