Financial Institutions Failing to Identify Activity Linked to Illicit Mining: Report
Banks and investors are failing to adequately screen for illegal mining risks even when operating in sectors highly exposed to the trade, according to a report by the World Wide Fund for Nature and financial-crime risk platform Themis.
Russia’s Latest Shadow-Fleet Cargo: GRU Veterans and Wagner Mercenaries
Russian military veterans, including former Wagner mercenaries and men linked to the GRU, have been deployed aboard tankers in Moscow’s “shadow fleet” moving sanctioned oil through the Baltic Sea.
AI Increasingly Used to Dodge Economic and Trade Sanctions
Artificial intelligence is making sanctions and export-control evasion schemes harder to detect by enabling the creation of realistic fake companies and phony documentation used to obviate international trade restrictions.
When a U.S. Anti-Bribery Law Is a Statecraft Weapon, Not a Domestic Deterrent
Washington is increasingly turning U.S. anti-corruption enforcement into an instrument of economic statecraft—a shift that threatens to undercut decades of American efforts to fight illicit activity abroad.
U.S., Gulf Banks Brace for Cyberattacks as Iran Conflict Continues
U.S. banks have stepped up monitoring for potential cyberattacks as the U.S. war in Iran grinds on, while Gulf lenders face fresh questions over their preparedness for cyber activity tied to Iran-aligned hacktivists.
Stablecoins Now Commonly Used in Illicit Finance, FATF Warns
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said that stablecoins are now commonly used in money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing schemes, and warned that peer-to-peer transfers via unhosted wallets represent a key vulnerability for the crypto ecosystem.
Tether Has Frozen Billions of Dollars in Crypto Linked to Illicit Activity
Stablecoin issuer Tether said it has frozen about $4.2 billion of its USDT tokens over links to “illicit activity,” with most of the freezes occurring in the past three years, as authorities worldwide intensify efforts to curb crypto-related crime.
When the ‘Person with Significant Control’ Isn’t Really a Person
Two cryptocurrency exchanges registered in the United Kingdom and marketed as processing more than $1 billion a day were fronted by a purported executive who “doesn’t seem to exist” and was instead portrayed using stock footage, OCCRP reported.
How Agentic AI Could Speed Up Crypto Money Laundering
Autonomous AI “agents” that can initiate and execute transactions without real-time human input are compressing the timelines that anti-money laundering (AML) compliance teams and law enforcement rely on to detect and stop illicit crypto activity.
Telegram Messaging App Increasingly Exploited by Fraudsters, Revolut Finds
The messaging platform Telegram has become a hub for job scams and other forms of fraud, Revolut is warning.