Illicit Finance

Cryptocurrency flows to suspected human trafficking services surged 85% in 2025, reaching hundreds of millions of dollars across identified services.

Deutsche Bank continued providing services to Jeffrey Epstein for months after telling the disgraced financier it would end its relationship with him in late 2018 and only moved to terminate all of his accounts following his final arrest in July 2019.

Paxful Holdings Inc., a peer-to-peer virtual currency trading platform, was sentenced on Tuesday to pay a $4-million criminal penalty after pleading guilty to conspiracies tied to illegal prostitution, anti-money-laundering failures and transmitting criminal proceeds.

The Council of Europe has agreed to remove the diplomatic immunity granted to Thorbjoern Jagland, clearing the way for Norwegian police to investigate the former secretary general’s newly uncovered relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

A bipartisan coalition of U.S. House lawmakers has introduced legislation that would order the State Department to add Russian mercenary groups to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).

Trade misinvoicing may have siphoned roughly $3.64 trillion in illicit value out of the Western hemisphere over the decade from 2013 to 2022, with annual “trade value gaps” climbing to a new high of about $473.2 billion in 2022, according to a new report by Global Financial Integrity (GFI). 

Drug cartels and other criminal groups are increasingly using cryptocurrencies and a growing “gig” workforce of freelance brokers and couriers to launder cash and evade law enforcement, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.

HSBC and Barclays are facing a $12-billion civil lawsuit involving a now-defunct Jersey trust that has been linked in proposed U.S. legislation to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, The Times reported.

The mayor of Ecuador’s largest port city was arrested Tuesday on charges of money laundering and tax evasion, as prosecutors widened a case that also swept up his brother and other members of his inner circle, the Associated Press said. 

The Council of Europe’s anti-money-laundering body on Tuesday published a new report on how criminals exploit crypto-assets to launder illicit proceeds, fund terrorism, and evade sanctions.