Tech

Drug cartels and other criminal groups are increasingly using cryptocurrencies and a growing “gig” workforce of freelance brokers and couriers to launder cash and evade law enforcement, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.

The European Commission has proposed a blanket ban on cryptocurrency transactions linked to Russia and new trade restrictions on Kyrgyzstan in an effort to close loopholes used by Moscow to fund its war in Ukraine. 

The Council of Europe’s anti-money-laundering body on Tuesday published a new report on how criminals exploit crypto-assets to launder illicit proceeds, fund terrorism, and evade sanctions.

Criminal syndicates operating scam centers in Southeast Asia are adopting inexpensive artificial-intelligence tools to widen their reach and keep operations running even as governments intensify crackdowns, senior Interpol officials told Bloomberg.

Goldman Sachs has been working with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic for the past six months to co-develop autonomous “AI agents” intended to automate trade and transaction accounting and client vetting and onboarding.

Last month, the dollar-pegged stablecoin created by the Trump family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, reached an important milestone: the total circulation of USD1 exceeded $5 billion for the first time, ranking it among the world’s top cryptocurrencies, according to recent reporting by The New York Times. 

A Spanish police corruption investigation has widened into a narcotics and money-laundering scandal that links a senior economic-crimes investigator and a son of the Duke of Seville to an international drug-trafficking ring, The Times reported. 

U.S. investigators are examining whether specific cryptocurrency platforms have helped Iranian officials and state-linked actors evade sanctions as crypto activity in Iran surges, a blockchain researcher with direct knowledge of Treasury’s concerns told Reuters.

An Abu Dhabi royal secretly backed a $500-million deal to buy nearly half of a Trump-linked cryptocurrency venture months before the United Arab Emirates secured expanded access to tightly controlled U.S. artificial-intelligence chips, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Chinese-language money laundering networks have become a central conduit for illicit cryptocurrency activity, processing an estimated 20% of known on-chain laundering over the past five years and accelerating far faster than illicit financial flows tied to centralized exchanges.