Illicit Finance

Mexico’s banking lobby is urging lenders to adopt tougher rules on illicit finance that go beyond current law, after U.S. authorities moved to sever three Mexican firms from the American financial system for allegedly laundering money for fentanyl traffickers, according to Bloomberg.

A former director at Trenchant, an L3Harris Technologies subsidiary that develops offensive cyber tools, pleaded guilty Wednesday to stealing and reselling trade secrets worth $35 million to a Russian broker whose clients include the Russian government, Bloomberg reported.

European lawmakers will push for wildlife trafficking to be recognized as organized crime by 2030 and for tougher global enforcement at next month’s United Nations meeting on endangered species, Euronews reported. 

Sub-Saharan Africa’s two largest economies, South Africa and Nigeria, were delisted Friday from a global watchdog’s roster of jurisdictions under increased monitoring for illicit money flows, alongside Mozambique and Burkina Faso.

A former Citibank relationship manager has pleaded guilty and been sentenced to two years in jail for helping a Chinese criminal network launder money in Singapore, the Financial Times reported. 

A new legal filing alleges that a cryptocurrency promoted in January by U.S. First Lady Melania Trump was part of a sophisticated scheme that used celebrity association to lend legitimacy to token launches, according to Wired. 

Worldline SA said an independent review found “uneven” implementation of anti-financial-crime controls across the company, even as the French payments processor reported a drop in third-quarter revenue and outlined plans to streamline its business.

Proposed legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate would increase dollar-thresholds triggering reporting requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act for the first time since 1970 and require periodic adjustments to account for inflation, Republican lawmakers said.  The “Streamlining Transaction Reporting and Ensuring Anti-Money Laundering Improvements for a New Era Act”, or STREAMLINE Act, would raise the […]

An unprecedented U.S. Treasury order cutting three Mexican financial institutions off from the American financial system took effect Monday, after already forcing asset sales, client flight and heightened compliance across Mexico’s banking sector, Bloomberg reported.

Canada will launch a new federal financial-crimes agency and change banking laws to clamp down on online fraud and other scams, the country’s Department of Finance announced on Monday.