Illicit Finance

The Trump administration has allowed a temporary sanctions waiver on Russian oil to expire, ending a short-lived reprieve that had permitted the sale of some blacklisted Russian crude and pulling back from a policy that was intended to help contain surging global oil prices.

UK financial regulators are urgently assessing the risks posed by Anthropic’s latest AI model after concerns that its ability to uncover software vulnerabilities could expose major financial institutions to new cybersecurity threats.

The Internal Revenue Service has lost thousands of enforcement staffers since President Donald Trump returned to office. The cuts are fueling fears, and in some cases, hopes, that the agency’s capacity to enforce U.S. tax laws is diminished.

A French court on Monday sentenced former Lafarge chief executive Bruno Lafont to six years in prison for paying armed jihadist groups to keep the company’s Syrian cement plant operating in 2013 and 2014, in a ruling that Le Monde described as a landmark corporate terrorism-financing case.

Iran has built a more complex trade system under years of Western sanctions, relying increasingly on China, barter arrangements, and covert financing channels that help it keep goods moving even as formal restrictions target its oil exports, banking access, and foreign trade.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell summoned Wall Street executives this week to warn that a new artificial intelligence model from Anthropic could mark the start of a more dangerous phase in cybersecurity.

Dutch police have arrested eight men on suspicion of identity fraud, forgery, and cybercrime in a nationwide operation targeting users of VerifTools, a fake-ID platform that investigators say generated forged documents for criminals around the world. 

UBS AG has won dismissal of money-laundering charges inherited from Credit Suisse over the long-running Mozambique tuna-bond scandal after a Swiss court found criminal liability could not be transferred after the bank’s 2023 takeover of its former rival.

Ukraine is seeing early signs that sanctions are disrupting Russia’s access to some foreign technology used in Shahed drones, although newly manufactured Western and Asian components are still being found in the weapons.

Indonesian authorities have named former commodities trader Mohammad Riza Chalid as a suspect in a second corruption investigation tied to crude oil and fuel procurement, broadening a probe that is renewing scrutiny of longstanding practices in the country’s energy market.