Illicit Finance

A group of Finnish soldiers being sworn in.

Finnish authorities are tightening scrutiny of real-estate purchases after a series of Russian-linked property deals raised fears that land and buildings near military facilities and critical infrastructure could be used for espionage or sabotage.

Guernsey’s government is weighing new transparency rules that would let approved applicants access information on the beneficial owners of companies registered on the island.

AI edited image showing a pictorial representation of a chatbot with several prompts for the user, one of which reads "Ask me to layer your money..."

Autonomous AI “agents” that can initiate and execute transactions without real-time human input are compressing the timelines that anti-money laundering (AML) compliance teams and law enforcement rely on to detect and stop illicit crypto activity.

Nicaraguan heads of state Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo send together while Ortega shakes the hand of a woman who is mostly off camera.

The U.S. on Thursday blacklisted five senior Nicaraguan officials for their alleged role in helping Nicaragua to consolidate authoritarian power through financial controls, labor policy, surveillance, and military intelligence operations.

A photo of shipping containers on a cargo ship

A record mismatch in official trade statistics is complicating efforts to measure how far the U.S. and China have “decoupled,” according to Bloomberg, which cited an $112-billion gap between what Beijing said it exported to the United States and what U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded as arriving.