Illicit Finance

Customers of the Claude artificial-intelligence chatbot are being targeted by a fraud scheme in which scammers use compromised accounts to buy hundreds of pounds’ worth of gift cards.

President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order authorizing penalties against foreign banks and other companies anywhere in the world that do business with the Cuban government. 

Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange was founded and is controlled by two brothers from the Kharrazi family, one of the Islamic Republic’s most influential clerical dynasties and now closely tied to new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

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.

Russia has emerged as Syria’s dominant oil supplier, with shipments rising about 75 percent to roughly 60,000 barrels per day this year despite Damascus’s pivot toward the West and lingering public anger over Moscow’s military backing of ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.

The United States imposed sanctions on former Democratic Republic of the Congo President Joseph Kabila, accusing him of supporting armed groups that Washington says have fueled conflict and instability in eastern Congo.

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.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) placed Austria in enhanced follow-up after finding the country’s framework for investigating and prosecuting money laundering remains weak more than a decade after similar concerns were first raised.

U.S. prosecutors charged the governor of Mexico’s Sinaloa state, the mayor of Culiacan, a sitting Mexican senator, and seven others with running a drug-trafficking conspiracy with the Sinaloa Cartel.