PEPs

Local governments in southern Italy that colluded with organized crime deliberately avoided large EU-funded projects to stay below anti-mafia certification thresholds, according to new academic research.

OFAC designated more than a dozen individuals and entities linked to the Sinaloa Cartel, targeting two separate networks accused of fentanyl trafficking and money laundering, including one that allegedly converted bulk U.S. drug cash into cryptocurrency for transfer to cartel leadership in Mexico.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating a surge of more than $800 million in oil futures trades that occurred moments before President Trump announced on social media that he was postponing strikes on Tehran’s energy infrastructure.

Spain’s National Court has charged former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero with money laundering, influence peddling, document falsification, and related criminal offenses stemming from the government’s €53-million pandemic-era bailout of Plus Ultra airlines.

Alex Saab, the businessman widely seen as the financial fixer for ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, was charged with money laundering in federal court in Miami on Monday.

Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has moved billions of dollars across two blockchains whose founders are among the most prominent backers of a digital currency venture co-founded by U.S. President Donald Trump and his family.

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s sanctions against a United Nations official who has called for war crimes charges against Israeli officials over their actions in Gaza, ruling that the penalties violated her free-speech rights.

Polish lawmakers on Friday approved a bill regulating cryptocurrencies as a scandal over the collapse of the country’s biggest crypto exchange widened and questions deepened over whether President Karol Nawrocki, who has twice vetoed similar measures, will sign it into law.

Financial-crime authorities across the Middle East and North Africa hold powers that look adequate on paper but fail in practice, with anti-corruption agencies unable to freeze assets, prosecutors acting as political gatekeepers, and high-risk sectors filing almost no suspicious activity reports.

Brazilian lawmaker and presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro negotiated $24 million in financing from jailed banker Daniel Vorcaro to bankroll a biographical film about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro.