Illicit Finance

A March 2025 Treasury Department rule exempting virtually all U.S. companies from beneficial ownership reporting requirements has created significant gaps in the federal government’s ability to combat shell company abuse, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has warned in a new report. 

The United Kingdom government warned it could legislate to compel its Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories to adopt public registers of beneficial ownership if voluntary efforts continue to stall, the prime minister’s anti-corruption champion said.

Panama has enacted a 15 percent tax on corporations without domestic activities, targeting shell companies used by wealthy foreigners to shield profits earned abroad, as the country seeks to shed its tax-haven reputation and exit a European Union blacklist.

Digital money transfer giant Wise is under criminal investigation by Belgian prosecutors over concerns that its accounts were used by international criminal organizations to launder proceeds of fraud, corruption, and drug trafficking.

Morgan Stanley and several European banks risk being drawn into a French criminal investigation over the 2022 sale of Vincent Bolloré’s African transport and logistics business, as an anti-corruption association seeks to compel them to hand over internal documents related to the €5.7-billion transaction.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday sanctioned Nobitex, Iran’s largest digital asset exchange, accusing the platform of helping Tehran evade sanctions and facilitate terrorist financing and ransomware attacks. 

An employee of Banco Santander’s Chile unit was among 18 suspects detained Tuesday as Chilean authorities moved against an alleged $85-million money-laundering network tied to the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua.

Swiss prosecutors raided the Geneva offices of commodity trader Gunvor as part of a criminal investigation into suspected bribery of foreign public officials, dealing a fresh blow to the company’s efforts to rehabilitate its reputation following a series of prior corruption convictions.

FTI Consulting, Inc. has agreed to pay $1,050,000 to settle potential civil liability for apparent violations of U.S. sanctions on Russia’s financial sector, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced Monday.

The U.S. Department of Justice has reached a temporary staffing compromise that will return about 40 white-collar prosecutors, including those focused on insider trading, to the Criminal Division’s fraud section, reversing an April transfer to the Trump administration’s new fraud division.