All Articles

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

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

Credit Suisse is again under pressure as Swiss prosecutors move forward with an indictment focused on money flows tied to the Mozambique loan arrangements, alleging that millions connected to the 2013 state-guaranteed financing entered accounts at the former bank and were then sent abroad despite red flags pointing to potential criminal origins. The case lays out a progression of internal decisions that, according to prosecutors, allowed questionable transfers to proceed with

Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s former foreign policy chief, has been detained by Belgian police in connection with an anti-fraud probe that has rattled Brussels. Mogherini, who led the EU’s diplomatic service as High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy from 2014 to 2019, was taken in for questioning on Tuesday morning during a series of coordinated raids targeting suspected irregularities in an EU-funded project. Since 2020, she has served as rect

Synergy Credit Union has been hit with a 214,500-dollar penalty following regulatory findings that revealed significant deficiencies in its anti-money laundering (AML) controls, drawing national attention in Canada. The enforcement action followed a compliance examination by FINTRAC, which uncovered multiple breaches related to reporting lapses, gaps in risk assessment, and insufficient oversight. The findings highlighted structural weaknesses that directly impaired the credi

Regulators have issued a 300,000-dollar penalty to BMO Capital Markets after uncovering what they described as a multiyear collapse in transaction-reporting controls that repeatedly obscured fixed-income market visibility. Findings show that the firm allowed late, incomplete, and inaccurate TRACE submissions to persist for years, limiting the transparency required by surveillance teams and market participants. Automated reporting was not introduced until long after deficienci

South Africa’s National Treasury has unveiled a proposal for a national 20% tax on gross gambling revenue (GGR) from online gambling, positioning the measure as a tool to reduce the social risks linked to the rapidly expanding digital betting sector.   In a discussion paper released on 25 November, the Treasury outlined plans for the levy to cover all forms of online betting, including interactive gambling platforms.   Although Treasury officials estimate the measure could ra

South Korea’s top online retailer, Coupang, has issued an apology after revealing a large-scale security breach that may have compromised the personal information of almost 34 million domestic customer accounts.   The nation’s internet regulator confirmed that it has launched an inquiry, noting that data linked to the millions of affected accounts appears to have been exposed. Often dubbed the South Korean counterpart to Amazon.com , Coupang now finds itself at the center of

The European Union’s effort to leverage immobilised Russian state assets to support Ukraine has triggered warnings that such a move could increase borrowing costs for governments across the bloc, though several analysts say any effect on sovereign debt markets is likely to remain limited. The European Commission, searching for a long-term financing solution for Kyiv, is focusing on a €140bn “reparation loan” backed by Russian central-bank reserves frozen since 2022. Euroclear

Iraq’s financial regulators are raising alarms over a growing trend in which social-media personalities are being leveraged as tools for illicit financial transfers.   According to officials, the combination of online visibility, rapid audience engagement, and loosely monitored revenue channels has created conditions that criminal groups can exploit when institutional controls lag behind evolving digital behaviour. The Central Bank of Iraq reports that some transaction flows

A fresh comparison of raw demographic inputs from Blask, examined alongside the markets singled out in the EGBA’s 2023 overview, shows just how differently Europeans approach online gambling — not only in scale, but in who plays and why.   Europe’s gambling heavyweights — Italy, the UK, Germany, France, and Spain — dominate the continent’s revenue landscape according to the EGBA’s 2023 figures, yet the customer profiles behind those numbers, illuminated by Blask’s datasets, p

Seven of Europe’s leading gambling authorities have committed to deeper collaboration in an effort to curb the accelerating spread of illegal online gambling, cautioning that rapidly evolving digital ecosystems are enabling unlicensed operators to slip past national regulatory systems. Representatives from Germany, Austria, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal, and Spain cemented this alliance during a meeting held on 12 November 2025 at Spain’s Directorate General for

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has formally withdrawn its lawsuit against SolarWinds and the company’s chief information security officer, bringing an end to a high-profile case that centered on allegations the firm misled investors about its security posture prior to the major 2020 supply chain breach.   A joint motion submitted on November 20, 2025, by the SEC, SolarWinds, and CISO Timothy G. Brown requested the court to voluntarily dismiss the action. In

Turkish investigators are scrutinising how a licensed electronic money institution and an associated insurance company allegedly enabled criminal proceeds from illegal betting operations to seep into the country’s financial system. The inquiry centres on corporate entities tied to fintech entrepreneur Ozan Özerk, whose broader business network includes firms previously connected to payment streams linked to a sprawling online fraud operation exposed by investigative journalis

In September 2024, Wynn Las Vegas acknowledged to the U.S. Department of Justice that it had “conspired with unlicensed money transmitting businesses that moved millions of dollars in illicit funds through the casino,” agreeing to forfeit an unprecedented $130 million. At the time, the public learned little about what exactly drove the largest-ever forfeiture involving a U.S. casino. The government’s announcement offered only sweeping descriptions, leaving unanswered question

Mounting concern over increasingly coordinated financial schemes targeting Korean citizens has pushed the KoFIU’s AML agenda into a phase of acute urgency. Patterns tied to cross-border fraud networks, synchronized mule operations, and the rapid circulation of illicit funds through both banking and nonbank channels have expanded, prompting regulators to reconsider how domestic institutions identify and address structural vulnerabilities. The most recent industry meeting revea

India and Italy have elevated their cooperation to an unprecedented level after both governments agreed to intensify joint measures against global money laundering systems that violent extremist groups rely on. Their discussions during the G20 in Johannesburg shifted a routine diplomatic exchange into a coordinated framework aimed squarely at dismantling clandestine financial pipelines. This cooperation places Narendra Modi and Giorgia Meloni among the leaders most willing to

The UK National Crime Agency has revealed how Russian intelligence services funneled funds to a convicted espionage network via a cash-to-crypto laundering operation run by businesswoman Ekaterina Zhdanova, who sought to bankroll former Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek’s spy ring. This disclosure connects billion-dollar laundering networks to geopolitics, organized crime, and state-sponsored activity across at least 28 towns and cities in the United Kingdom. According to Bloom

Real-estate brokerages across Canada are confronting heightened oversight from FINTRAC under the expanding anti-money-laundering framework, and five recent enforcement actions illustrate how gaps in anti-money-laundering real estate compliance can quickly translate into significant sanctions. With real-estate brokerage AML duties now squarely in regulators’ focus, and each decision carrying a defined Canada AML penalty, the following report examines each case in detail, highl

The case involving Videoslots Limited underscores how rapidly shifting deposit activity and opaque digital voucher payments can expose serious laundering risks when automated systems drive the majority of oversight. The operator was hit with a substantial financial penalty after investigators identified repeated failures across customer monitoring, source-of-funds evaluation and behavioural assessment. These shortcomings reveal how criminal networks can take advantage of weak