Counterparty

Fugitive former Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek has been linked to a sprawling, multibillion-dollar money laundering network that British investigators say connects street-level drug dealers in the UK to sanctioned Russian oligarchs and the Kremlin’s security services, the Financial Times reported.

An intricate network of Russian, North Korean, and Gulf-based companies has been quietly helping funnel hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil to North Korea in apparent violation of U.N. sanctions, according to a new investigation by OCCRP and its affiliates.

French investigators have stepped up their probe into alleged corruption at Patrick Drahi’s Altice telecoms group with a series of coordinated raids across the country, seizing cash, luxury goods and other assets, Bloomberg reported.

Brazil’s central bank unveiled long-awaited rules for virtual assets on Monday, extending anti–money laundering (AML) and counterterrorism financing (CTF) obligations to crypto firms and classifying fiat-pegged crypto transactions as foreign-exchange operations, Reuters reported. 

ID thieves based in California’s San Fernando Valley and Glendale have been using the Social Security Numbers of foreign scholars who left the U.S. years ago to file hundreds of bank and credit-card applications, according to a cybercrime expert who spoke with the Los Angeles Times.

A third of inspected law firms in England and Wales are breaching anti-money laundering (AML) requirements, according to a report on new figures from the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). 

The U.S. Treasury Department eased parts of its Belarus sanctions regime on Tuesday, lifting measures on the state airline Belavia and authorizing certain transactions tied to President Alexander Lukashenko’s presidential aircraft, Reuters reported. 

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned eight individuals and two entities allegedly tied to laundering illicit proceeds from DPRK cybercrime and overseas IT work. 

Blacklisted charities affiliated with Hezbollah have been directing supporters to send money through Lebanon’s booming digital payments sector, routing contributions to wallets held by private individuals rather than official charity accounts, the Financial Times reported.

British authorities have seized more than £12 million ($15.6 million) worth of fossilized dinosaur bones as part of a court-approved settlement with Chinese national Su Binghai, a suspect in a sprawling money-laundering scandal that has reverberated from Singapore to London, Bloomberg said.