Fraud

Gérard Lhéritier, the French businessman convicted of running what prosecutors called the largest Ponzi scheme ever uncovered in France, has avoided prison after negotiating a last-minute plea bargain citing age and health.

Spain’s National Court has charged former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero with money laundering, influence peddling, document falsification, and related criminal offenses stemming from the government’s €53-million pandemic-era bailout of Plus Ultra airlines.

Polish lawmakers on Friday approved a bill regulating cryptocurrencies as a scandal over the collapse of the country’s biggest crypto exchange widened and questions deepened over whether President Karol Nawrocki, who has twice vetoed similar measures, will sign it into law.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are urging Wall Street companies to confess to fraud in exchange for behind-the-scenes deals that would spare them from criminal charges, fines, and public disclosure of their wrongdoing.

Jho Low, the fugitive Malaysian financier accused of masterminding the multibillion-dollar 1MDB fraud, has submitted a request for a presidential pardon to U.S. President Donald Trump.

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.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has removed Singapore from its enhanced follow-up list but the city-state’s beneficial-ownership safeguards, money-laundering prosecutions, and proliferation-financing controls are still falling short of the risks it faces as one of the world’s largest financial centers.

ING Belgium has agreed to pay a €1.6 million settlement over alleged failures to report suspicious transactions linked to former European Commissioner Didier Reynders.

HSBC has booked a $400-million “fraud-related” charge tied to the collapse of UK bridging lender Market Financial Solutions, hitting first-quarter profits at Europe’s biggest bank and exposing one of the most material indirect transmission channels yet between private credit and a global systemically important lender.

Thousands of seemingly legitimate UK high street shops are being used by organized-crime groups to launder illicit cash, sell illegal goods, and feed wider criminal networks, with at least £47 billion a year drained from the British economy by the schemes.