Illicit Finance

Last December, the Trump administration moved swiftly to free former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández after President Donald Trump granted him an unexpected pardon for his 2024 conviction on bribery and drug-trafficking charges. Few would’ve predicted what happened next.

The fallout of the release of the Epstein Files continued this week, with emergence of new details of the deceased sex trafficker’s finances, the launch of additional investigations into suspicious money flows and related sexual-abuse allegations, and the arrest of a former British royal.

Ricardo Salinas Pliego, the Mexican billionaire behind Grupo Elektra, thought he’d done enough due diligence when he decided to invest $400 million in Bitcoin as the value of the cryptocurrency surged in the spring of 2021. 

Asian trading networks continue to route European-made dual-use technology into Russia’s war economy, exploiting gaps in the continent’s sanctions designations and enforcement, according to new research published by the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation.

Russia is exploiting a network of front companies, influence agents, and third-country logistics routes to obtain German-made components needed for its attack drones and missiles.

Stablecoins have become both core crypto “plumbing” and a key rail for the most consequential forms of crypto-enabled crime, with illicit activity increasingly concentrated in a handful of large, sanctions-linked networks.

As allegations swirled in 2023 that the Adani Group’s yearslong stock rally was driven by insider manipulation, two close associates of the Adani family privately admitted to their bankers that they held billions of dollars in the conglomerate’s shares through multiple hedge funds, according to bank records. 

Peru’s Congress voted Tuesday to remove interim President José Jerí from office as he faces corruption and influence-peddling allegations, plunging the country into another bout of political instability just weeks before April’s presidential and congressional elections, according to France 24.

Crime boss Kazem Hamad has taken a major financial stake in the Manchester tobacco company in Dubai, cementing his cartel’s control over Australia’s illicit cigarette market from manufacturing and smuggling through to retail sales in suburban shops.

Belgian prosecutors have charged two people close to former European Commissioner Didier Reynders as part of a money-laundering investigation that until now had focused on Reynders alone.