Terrorist Financing

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 U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on Monday issued an advisory urging banks and other financial institutions to step up detection and reporting of healthcare fraud tied to Medicare, Medicaid and other public health benefit programs.

The Trump administration is weighing whether to designate Brazil’s two largest drug gangs as terrorist organizations, a step that could expand the U.S. sanctions toolkit to include financial restrictions on the groups and their associates.

Florida shell companies and virtual office addresses are at the center of an expanding international investigation into at least $260 million in funds tied to Argentina’s top soccer authority.

Binance failed for months to cut ties with a payment-processing vendor despite a series of red flags that pointed to possible sanctions evasion and money laundering involving transfers later linked to Iran.

China remains the destination for about 90 percent of Iranian crude exports despite a recent U.S. sanctions waiver intended to release previously restricted oil onto global markets.

Two Chinese pharmaceutical firms and six Chinese nationals are facing charges after prosecutors said they were part of a drug-trafficking network that provided material support to the Cártel del Golfo (CDG), a Mexican criminal syndicate that was designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

It was a tiny Swiss bank, headquartered in an open-plan office close to Lake Zurich and little known abroad. But MBaer Merchant Bank AG would sometimes charge clients 10 times the normal rate to process payments.

The U.S. Treasury Department said on Friday it had imposed sanctions on an international network of 16 people and companies that allegedly diverted more than $100 million to Hezbollah since 2020. 

Companies House has removed cryptocurrency exchange Zedxion Exchange Ltd. from the UK’s register of businesses after an investigative report by OCCRP found the firm used a fictitious director and misleading incorporation filings to conceal links to sanctioned Iranian tycoon Babak Zanjani.