Illicit Finance

Brazil’s biggest-ever bank fraud case has left the country’s banking system facing a 52 billion-real ($9.9 billion) bill after Banco Master used funds, asset sales, and other maneuvers to hide major balance-sheet problems from investors and regulators.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said he has pressed Binance for records over concerns the cryptocurrency exchange may have given Congress misleading information about reported money laundering and terrorist financing tied to Iran. 

Ten years after the Panama Papers exposed the offshore financial system exploited by tax cheats and criminals around the world, prosecutions and transparency reforms tied to the landmark investigation are still unfolding.

German authorities have uncovered an alleged €300-million payments fraud that has drawn in former staff and executives at several payment companies, deepening the sector’s long-running crisis years after the collapse of Wirecard.

A U.S. judge on Thursday granted preliminary approval to Bank of America’s $72.5 million settlement with women who accused the bank of facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse.

Drift Protocol, the largest decentralized perpetual futures exchange on the Solana blockchain, was exploited for about $286 million in a hack that blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said bore multiple indicators of a possible North Korean link.

The British Virgin Islands has opened part of its long-guarded corporate registry to outside scrutiny, but anti-corruption advocates say the new transparency rules contain loopholes that could let bad actors hide ownership information and undermine investigations.

Rwanda has threatened to withdraw its troops from northern Mozambique, where they have spent the past five years containing Islamic State-linked militants, after the U.S. imposed sanctions on Kigali over its alleged support for the M23 insurgency in neighboring Congo.

French anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating whether a thwarted bombing at Bank of America’s Paris office was linked to an Iran-backed group that has urged attacks on Jewish communities and businesses across Europe, according to a Financial Times report.

Chinese authorities have arrested the former chairman of Cambodia’s Huione Group, a financial conglomerate identified as a central player in a global money-laundering network, in the latest escalation of Beijing’s campaign against transnational organized crime in Southeast Asia, The New York Times said.  Li Xiong, a Chinese national and former chairman of Huione Group, was […]