Oversight

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said he has pressed Binance for records over concerns the cryptocurrency exchange may have given Congress misleading information about reported money laundering and terrorist financing tied to Iran. 

The British Virgin Islands has opened part of its long-guarded corporate registry to outside scrutiny, but anti-corruption advocates say the new transparency rules contain loopholes that could let bad actors hide ownership information and undermine investigations.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) will prioritize enforcement against insider trading in prediction markets, manipulation in energy markets, spoofing, retail fraud, and willful violations of anti-money-laundering (AML) laws, the agency’s new enforcement director said Tuesday. 

Malta is mounting an unusually public fight against a European Union push to centralize crypto supervision, arguing the move would strip the island-nation of oversight over major digital-asset firms it helped attract and regulate.

Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr warned on Tuesday that stablecoins pose risks related to money laundering, financial stability, and reserve quality, as U.S. banking agencies work on regulations to implement new federal rules for the sector.

Two Democratic U.S. senators pressed Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins on Monday to explain the abrupt resignation of the agency’s enforcement director and whether it was tied to the SEC’s pullback from cryptocurrency cases linked to Donald Trump.

The U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) on Monday issued an advisory urging banks and other financial institutions to step up detection and reporting of healthcare fraud tied to Medicare, Medicaid and other public health benefit programs.

The Trump administration is weighing whether to designate Brazil’s two largest drug gangs as terrorist organizations, a step that could expand the U.S. sanctions toolkit to include financial restrictions on the groups and their associates.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has discussed ways to tighten the Treasury’s oversight of the Federal Reserve by borrowing elements from the Bank of England model, in a move that could significantly reshape the central bank’s relationship with the government.

It was a tiny Swiss bank, headquartered in an open-plan office close to Lake Zurich and little known abroad. But MBaer Merchant Bank AG would sometimes charge clients 10 times the normal rate to process payments.