Tax Crimes

Canadian penny stock trader John Babikian, once dubbed the “Wolf of Montreal,” obtained a new legal identity, secured residency in Latvia, and bought a luxury apartment in Dubai after disappearing from public view following a U.S. securities settlement.

Jeffrey Epstein received $25 million in late 2015 for consulting work tied to a U.S. Justice Department tax-evasion settlement with Swiss private bank Edmond de Rothschild Group.

Trade misinvoicing is occurring at “massive scale” across Asian supply chains, with discrepancies in reported invoice values reaching a record $1.7 trillion in 2022 across developing Asia.

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.

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.

The trial of Russian businessman Dmitry Klyuev, accused by French prosecutors of laundering proceeds of the $230 million Magnitsky Affair fraud through luxury purchases in France, opened in Paris on Monday. 

The Justice Department released its first department-wide corporate enforcement policy for criminal matters, establishing a uniform framework for how prosecutors handle corporate cases across the department, except antitrust matters. 

Banks and investors are failing to adequately screen for illegal mining risks even when operating in sectors highly exposed to the trade, according to a report by the World Wide Fund for Nature and financial-crime risk platform Themis.

Referrals by the Internal Revenue Service for possible criminal tax violations by large corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals plummeted follwing President Donald Trump’s return to office, with the agency’s division responsible for auditing big businesses and billionaires sending at most two cases to criminal investigators in fiscal year 2025.

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.