Illicit Finance

U.S. officials have linked two prominent figures in English polo to an alleged scheme to launder proceeds from the illicit sale of Venezuelan oil, according to a Financial Times report that cited a recent Treasury Department notice about the now-defunct Swiss lender MBaer Merchant Bank.

North Korean IT operatives are increasingly using artificial intelligence tools to pose as remote workers, win jobs, and draw salaries from European companies, the Financial Times reported, citing cyber security experts who said the threat is spreading beyond the United States.

Cybercrime victims are increasingly being targeted a second time by fraudsters posing as lawyers, law enforcement officials, and recovery specialists who falsely promise they can retrieve stolen funds.

Illicit Iranian oil shipments continue to move through Asian waters toward China, generating a critical revenue stream for Tehran and helping Beijing build large crude stockpiles despite sanctions and heightened regional conflict.

Binance internal investigators identified VIP accounts they said helped channel more than $1 billion to wallets tied to Iran-linked entities, including one account registered to a 79-year-old Chinese resident and another linked to a suspected Iranian gold smuggler.

Leon Black, the billionaire financier and former chief executive of Apollo Global Management, has been ordered to sit for a deposition in a lawsuit accusing Bank of America of facilitating and profiting from Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.

A former Royal Bank of Scotland manager has admitted taking more than £600,000 in bribes in exchange for favorable treatment of business customers trapped inside the bank’s discredited Global Restructuring Group (GRG).

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday announced two new sanctions actions targeting financing and revenue-generation networks tied to Hamas and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Hong Kong authorities have arrested eight people in their biggest coordinated market misconduct raids since 2017, as regulators investigate an alleged HK$315 million ($40 million) insider dealing and corruption scheme involving two major brokerages and a hedge fund manager.

Fraud in the UK reached a record level in 2025, with 444,993 cases filed to the National Fraud Database, according to Cifas’s latest Fraudscape 2026 report.