Money Laundering

The U.S. Justice Department is poised to resolve its long-running criminal case against Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank through a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA).

The DEA opened a secret investigation into Jeffrey Epstein in 2015 on suspicions of money laundering, drug trafficking, and running a prostitution ring that procured Eastern European women for high-profile clients.

The United Arab Emirates is considering freezing billions of dollars in Iranian assets held in the Gulf state, a move that could sharply restrict Tehran’s access to foreign currency and global trade networks.

Kyiv’s assets-declaration watchdog missed multiple red flags in the filings of former Ukrainian energy minister Herman Halushchenko, according to Transparency International Ukraine. 

Star Entertainment’s ex-chief executive Matthias Bekier and former in-house lawyer Paula Martin breached their directors’ duties during the casino operator’s “Chinese money-laundering era”, the Australian Federal Court found.

Banco Master SA’s former chief executive Daniel Vorcaro was returned to custody for a second time in roughly three months as a widening probe into the collapsed lender added allegations of threats, intimidation, and illegal access to sensitive law-enforcement data.

The Trump administration is drafting a criminal indictment to potentially accuse Venezuelan interim President Delcy Rodriguez of corruption and money laundering.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said that stablecoins are now commonly used in money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing schemes, and warned that peer-to-peer transfers via unhosted wallets represent a key vulnerability for the crypto ecosystem. 

Western governments are being urged to tighten controls on cryptocurrency after new research warned that criminals and hostile states have laundered an estimated $350 billion using crypto over the past two decades.

Luxembourg authorities raided the premises of EFG Bank last week as part of a preliminary investigation into the institution’s compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) and counterterrorism financing (CTF) laws.