Illicit Finance

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an order directing the federal government to loosen marijuana regulations and accelerate a long-stalled effort to reclassify the drug, a step that could mark one of the biggest federal shifts on cannabis policy in decades, Reuters reported.

Australian regulators took coordinated action on Thursday to address weaknesses in the anti-money laundering and risk-management controls of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, including the imposition of a A$50 million operational-risk capital charge. 

Authorities raided the residential properties and offices of French Culture Minister Rachida Dati on Thursday as part of a corruption probe linked to her previous tenure as a member of the European Parliament, Bloomberg reported. 

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday vowed to designate Venezuela’s government a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” (FTO) and ordered a “total and complete” blockade of sanctioned oil tankers moving into and out of the country.

The social-media giant Meta has tolerated widespread advertising fraud tied to Chinese customers in order to protect billions of dollars in revenue, even after internal teams repeatedly flagged the activity as problematic, Reuters reported. 

The Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI) division identified $10.6 billion in tax and other financial crimes in the federal fiscal year ending September 30, a rise of nearly 16% from the prior year. 

Spanish prosecutors are investigating whether Madrid-based airline Plus Ultra used a €53-million Covid-era bailout to launder money embezzled from Venezuela through a web of companies in France, Switzerland and Spain, according to a report in El País.

Former Bolivian President Luis Arce was arrested on Wednesday as part of a sweeping corruption investigation, just a month after conservative President Rodrigo Paz took office and ended two decades of left-wing rule, according to the Associated Press.  

Mexican federal authorities have taken former Chihuahua governor César Duarte back into custody, preparing to charge him with laundering public funds allegedly diverted while he was in office, according to the Associated Press.

Israel’s largest defense company, Elbit Systems, has been suspended by NATO’s procurement arm and barred from bidding for work amid a widening corruption investigation into alleged bribery around military contracts.