Oversight

Digital money transfer giant Wise is under criminal investigation by Belgian prosecutors over concerns that its accounts were used by international criminal organizations to launder proceeds of fraud, corruption, and drug trafficking.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday sanctioned Nobitex, Iran’s largest digital asset exchange, accusing the platform of helping Tehran evade sanctions and facilitate terrorist financing and ransomware attacks. 

FTI Consulting, Inc. has agreed to pay $1,050,000 to settle potential civil liability for apparent violations of U.S. sanctions on Russia’s financial sector, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced Monday.

The U.S. Department of Justice has reached a temporary staffing compromise that will return about 40 white-collar prosecutors, including those focused on insider trading, to the Criminal Division’s fraud section, reversing an April transfer to the Trump administration’s new fraud division.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is moving to vacate a $5 million enforcement settlement reached with cryptocurrency exchange Gemini under the Biden administration, following a lobbying campaign by founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

China has launched the biggest overhaul of its cross-border tax and capital-controls regime in decades, threatening three popular offshore brokers with at least $330 million in penalties, vowing stricter bank oversight, and ramping up private pressure on the country’s wealthiest citizens.

A senior White House adviser personally directed the Pentagon to extend a $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements, a North Carolina rare-earth magnet startup partly owned by a venture firm tied to Donald Trump Jr.

Financial firms have improved their sanctions controls but persistent weaknesses in due diligence, screening, and asset-freezing controls continue to drive compliance violations, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said in a multi-firm review published Thursday.

The Trump administration has re-added a United Nations human rights official to the U.S. sanctions blacklist just one week after quietly removing her, and less than two weeks after a federal judge ruled the original designation unconstitutional.

The Netherlands faces a growing threat from organized crime that is silently corroding state institutions, public services, and democratic governance, according to a new threat assessment published Tuesday by the Strategic Knowledge Centre on Undermining Criminality (SKC).