All Articles

Poland’s ongoing failure to implement a comprehensive legal regime for digital assets aligned with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation has created a mounting anti-money-laundering threat, one intensified by the recent presidential veto of the enabling legislation. With this decision, Poland now stands as the lone EU member state without a MiCA-compliant framework, a position that has prompted sharp warnings from political leaders about the country’

A former high-level oil trader has been handed a fifteen-month prison term and ordered to pay a $300,000 fine after taking part in an almost eight-year criminal scheme involving bribery of Brazilian government officials and the laundering of corrupt funds to secure profitable business for the commodity firms that employed him. The trader, Glenn Oztemel—formerly with Arcadia Fuels Ltd. and later Freepoint Commodities LLC—participated in conduct that represents a profound breac

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has unveiled a new slate of growth initiatives for 2026, with a major focus on enabling UK-issued stablecoins to deliver quicker and more convenient payment options. As part of this effort, the regulator plans to open its sandbox to allow firms to test stablecoin issuance in a controlled environment, promoting both safe experimentation and forward-looking policymaking. In a letter addressed to the Prime Minister, the FCA noted that nearly

Spanish banking heavyweight Santander has agreed to pay a hefty €22.5 million fine in France, drawing to a close a protracted money laundering investigation centered on its French subsidiary, BPI Paris. The settlement was reached through a judicial public interest agreement, or Convention Judiciaire d’Intérêt Public (CJIP), a mechanism that enables corporations suspected of financial crimes to resolve proceedings by paying a substantial monetary penalty. This brings an end to

In its latest Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Supervision Report for 2024–25, HM Treasury delivers an expansive evaluation of the UK’s financial defenses against illicit activity, covering the work of 25 supervisory bodies and detailing wide-reaching structural reforms. The document highlights the government’s intention to overhaul the existing supervisory landscape by assigning the Financial Conduct Authority sole responsibility for overseeing professio

European football has been pulled into an extraordinary compliance conflict after a series of FIFA rulings — compounded by the existence of the FIFA Clearing House as a centralised payment system — placed clubs under pressure that closely resembled the dynamics typically associated with sanctions-evasion exposure. These decisions arrived while EU, UK, and US sanctions regimes barred payments to a range of Russian clubs and their banking partners, shutting down all lawful paym

Standard Chartered Plc has agreed to settle a long-running investor lawsuit valued at £1.5 billion ($2 billion) that accused the lender of deliberately violating sanctions against Iran to secure new business. The resolution emerged in a London Court of Appeal ruling on disclosure issued Friday, in which the judge noted that the parties had settled the matter after reviewing a draft version of the judgment. “After a draft of this judgment was circulated to the parties, they re

UK Finance has issued its strongest admonition yet to major global tech platforms, with chief executive David Postings urging Silicon Valley to “grasp the scale of the crisis” and significantly ramp up efforts to curb fraud proliferating across their networks. Addressing delegates at the Economic Crime Congress 2025, Postings described an escalating epidemic of financial crime in the UK—one that he argued no single industry can tackle alone. Although banks are committing re

Griffin Jewellery Designs Inc. has been hit with a CAD 771,000 penalty after FINTRAC uncovered extensive shortcomings in the company’s anti–money laundering controls. Operating across multiple Canadian provinces, the retailer was examined for its adherence to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, and the findings revealed deep-rooted structural failures rather than isolated mistakes. The case, now closed following full payment of the penalty, s

Gracetown has been issued a $7,139,305 penalty following an investigation that confirmed the company processed payments connected to a sanctioned Russian oligarch and failed for years to report blocked assets under its control. The enforcement decision underscores the severity of sanctions breaches and the money laundering risks that can surface within real estate structures. The case illustrates how financial activity involving designated individuals can persist when interme

BaFin recently imposed a €35,000 penalty on Leonteq Securities Europe, but unresolved contradictions across audits, supervisory investigations, public statements, and cross-border oversight have raised more questions than the fine itself. The publication accompanying the sanction offered almost no detail, a silence that sharply contrasts with the severity and breadth of findings in Germany, Switzerland, and France. Earlier regulatory findings revealed structural AML failures

A wide-ranging fraud network built around sham crypto investment platforms and extensive money-laundering channels has been brought down following a sweeping Europol intervention, shutting off an ecosystem that had channelled more than EUR 700 million through counterfeit trading dashboards and complex cross-border blockchain movements. Coordinated raids across Europe exposed the full architecture of the operation, showing how digital anonymity, fabricated interfaces, and orga

A $125,000 penalty imposed by FINRA on the firm underscores how serious lapses in reporting to the Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine can erode fixed income market transparency. The sanction also covers a separate violation involving customer confirmations that lacked required security price information. FINRA determined that the firm either misreported or neglected to report more than 12,000 transactions across several years, affecting corporate debt and Treasury trading

The £825,000 penalty imposed on Done Brothers Cash Betting Limited, trading as Betfred, has brought renewed attention to ongoing deficiencies in anti-money laundering (AML) controls within the retail gambling sector. According to the first paragraph of the regulatory report, the fine resulted from an investigation that concluded the operator had “failed to maintain effective anti-money laundering oversight for customers using B3 gaming machines.” Regulators determined that th

Serious supervisory lapses at one of the UK’s major professional bodies have drawn attention to significant money-laundering vulnerabilities across the bookkeeping profession. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has issued a formal public censure against the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB) after uncovering extensive deficiencies in the organisation’s oversight obligations. According to the regulator, the failings reflected systemic weaknesses that persisted for mor

Growing unease in the United Kingdom has focused on whether political donations made through digital assets could conceal the true financial source behind contributions. Officials argue that the country’s political finance rules must be updated to confront vulnerabilities that did not exist when the current framework was drafted. Scrutiny intensified after a major political party began accepting digital tokens from supporters early in 2025, triggering debate over transparency

IPI Partners, LLC, a Chicago-based private equity firm focused on acquiring, building and managing data-center facilities, has agreed to pay $11.5 million to resolve its civil liability stemming from 51 “apparent violations” of U.S. sanctions on Russia, the Treasury Department said in a statement. According to the department, the firm accepted and handled investments tied to Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov in 2017 and 2018 through a network of legal arrangements, and contin

The European Commission has opted to include Russia on its register of jurisdictions deemed to present a “high risk of money laundering and terrorist financing,” marking a significant escalation in the bloc’s financial-crime stance. The decision follows Russia’s suspension from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a step that still stopped short of formally blacklisting Moscow. Attempts by the Ukrainian government to secure that out

Advocate General Siewert Lindenbergh has issued guidance indicating that gambling agreements entered into before the Netherlands introduced its licensing system in April 2021 should not be regarded as invalid by default. His opinion comes in response to questions raised by the district courts of Amsterdam and Noord-Holland, both of which are handling test cases brought by players who are seeking repayment of losses accumulated before the country formally regulated online gamb

Speaking in Rome on November 28, 2025 at the UIF Bocconi Workshop on economic crime, Paolo Angelini, Deputy Director General of the Bank of Italy, delivered a detailed examination of how rapid shifts in digital finance are transforming the mechanics of illicit money movement, creating operational blind spots that European authorities are struggling to close. He argued that the accelerating adoption of digital tools by criminals has outpaced the regulatory frameworks meant to