Illicit Finance

Monaco’s financial markets watchdog has fined UBS €6 million for “numerous serious breaches” in anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing controls.

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on a Cuban military-controlled conglomerate, one of its top executives, and a Cuban nickel-mining joint venture, in the first round of designations under a new executive order targeting the island-nation. 

Ecuador’s financial regulators have launched a joint probe into possible money laundering at Banco Guayaquil, the country’s third-largest bank by net profit.

Brazilian federal police are targeting Senator Ciro Nogueira, a powerful ally of former President Jair Bolsonaro, as part of an expanding probe into the failed Banco Master.

President Donald Trump has signed off on a new U.S. counterterrorism strategy that makes eliminating drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere the administration’s highest priority, the White House announced Wednesday.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has removed Singapore from its enhanced follow-up list but the city-state’s beneficial-ownership safeguards, money-laundering prosecutions, and proliferation-financing controls are still falling short of the risks it faces as one of the world’s largest financial centers.

Tabcorp, Australia’s biggest listed bookmaker, disclosed that the country’s financial-crimes watchdog AUSTRAC has opened a formal investigation into whether it was complying with anti-money-laundering (AML) rules and properly monitoring its customers.

Hungarian police have opened a misappropriation and money-laundering investigation into the companies of Gyula Balásy, one of the country’s most prominent media and advertising figures and a long-time architect of Viktor Orbán’s government propaganda campaigns.

Small, little-known Chinese companies are openly marketing and shipping engines, batteries, fiber-optic cables, and other dual-use components to Iranian and Russian drone factories despite U.S. sanctions.

A network of TikTok accounts utilizing coded emojis, faction nicknames, and narco ballads are advertising the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) in an apparent attempt to recruit new members for one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations, according to a report released this week by social-media analysis firm Graphika.