Oversight Agency

IBM agreed to pay $17 million to resolve allegations by the Trump administration that its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies discriminated against employees and job applicants, in the first settlement secured under the Justice Department’s new Civil Rights Fraud Initiative.

A French court on Monday sentenced former Lafarge chief executive Bruno Lafont to six years in prison for paying armed jihadist groups to keep the company’s Syrian cement plant operating in 2013 and 2014, in a ruling that Le Monde described as a landmark corporate terrorism-financing case.

Iran has built a more complex trade system under years of Western sanctions, relying increasingly on China, barter arrangements, and covert financing channels that help it keep goods moving even as formal restrictions target its oil exports, banking access, and foreign trade.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell summoned Wall Street executives this week to warn that a new artificial intelligence model from Anthropic could mark the start of a more dangerous phase in cybersecurity.

UBS AG has won dismissal of money-laundering charges inherited from Credit Suisse over the long-running Mozambique tuna-bond scandal after a Swiss court found criminal liability could not be transferred after the bank’s 2023 takeover of its former rival.

Hong Kong has granted its first licenses for fiat-backed stablecoins to HSBC and a Standard Chartered-led joint venture, marking a significant step in the city’s effort to build a regulated market for virtual currencies used in finance and trade.

A donor to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is the registered manager and shareholder of a Dubai-based company that previously had business ties to an Iranian conglomerate later placed under U.S. sanctions.

The Trump administration is expected to extend its waiver of sanctions on Russian oil this week, according to former Treasury and State Department officials cited by Semafor, a step that could tee up a similar extension for Iranian oil later this month as the White House weighs fuel prices and broader market stability. 

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.

UBS AG said it will not hand over privileged documents sought in an investigation into Credit Suisse’s handling of Nazi-linked accounts after a U.S. judge declined to give the bank assurances that doing so would not expose it to new legal claims.