Terrorist Financing

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and four federal banking regulators proposed a rule on Wednesday that would require permitted payment stablecoin issuers to maintain customer identification programs under the GENIUS Act’s anti-money-laundering (AML) framework.

The European Union’s highest court ruled Thursday that a bank may not refuse to open a basic payment account for a consumer solely because the person appears on a U.S. sanctions list, holding that such a refusal is permissible only after an individual assessment of money-laundering and terrorist-financing risk.

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. 

A landmark public-private initiative convened by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Institute of International Finance will soon begin testing a tokenized payment platform for cross-border settlements across multiple currencies and jurisdictions. 

Russian intelligence-linked hackers who penetrated the U.S. Treasury Department in the 2020 SolarWinds cyberattack gained the ability to access email accounts across the entire agency, including staff working on sanctions and financial-crime investigations.

A resurgence of piracy off the coast of Somalia is compounding pressure on global shipping already strained by conflict in the Middle East, with multiple vessels hijacked in recent weeks and industry leaders warning of fresh strain on supply chains.

Federal authorities Friday announced the arrest of a senior commander of the Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kata’ib Hezbollah, accusing him of directing nearly 20 terrorist attacks across Europe and Canada and plotting to strike Jewish institutions in New York, Los Angeles, and Scottsdale, Arizona.

The head of Canada’s anti-money-laundering (AML) watchdog is stepping down as Ottawa overhauls its approach to fighting financial crime and braces for the results of an international audit of its controls.

Australia’s financial intelligence agency on Friday launched two supervisory campaigns targeting the country’s virtual assets sector, stepping up oversight of crypto businesses ahead of sweeping AML reforms, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) said in a statement.

President Donald Trump has signed off on a new U.S. counterterrorism strategy that makes eliminating drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere the administration’s highest priority, the White House announced Wednesday.