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Macau recorded a significant rise in gaming-related crime during the first three quarters of 2025, with police logging 1,737 cases, a year-on-year increase of 70.1 percent from the 1,021 cases reported over the same period in 2024. The figures were announced on December 12 by Secretary for Security Chan Tsz King.   Chan said the steep increase was mainly the result of changes in how gaming-related crimes are counted following the introduction of new anti-illegal gambling legi

The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) has imposed an administrative monetary penalty of $67,150 on Juba Express Inc., a Toronto-based money services business, following a compliance examination that identified multiple breaches of Canada’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing framework. The penalty, issued on August 29, 2025, relates to violations of Part 1 of the Proceeds of Crime, Money Laundering, and Terrorist Financin

The Financial Conduct Authority has handed Nationwide Building Society a £44m fine after finding serious shortcomings in its anti-money laundering and financial crime controls over a period of several years.   According to the UK regulator, Nationwide operated with inadequate anti-financial crime systems and controls between October 2016 and July 2021. During this time, those controls failed to effectively monitor transactions carried out by customers holding personal current

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has announced a substantial settlement of $1,092,000 with an individual identified only as U.S. Person-1, an attorney and former government official, to resolve civil liability arising from 122 apparent violations of U.S. sanctions related to Russia. The violations occurred while the attorney acted as a fiduciary for a U.S.-based family trust connected to a Russian oligarch who was designated a Spec

Millions of people across the European Union continued to move in and out of work in mid-2025, despite overall labour market indicators suggesting relative stability.   New figures published by Eurostat this week reveal substantial flows between employment, unemployment and economic inactivity between the second and third quarters of the year, shedding light on the scale and direction of labour market movements beneath the surface.   Eurostat reported that “3.1 million unempl

South Africa’s exploding online gambling crisis is being fuelled by a convergence of greedy domestic financial institutions and opportunistic offshore betting operators, creating not only a social catastrophe but a growing threat of large-scale money laundering. The sector’s rapid expansion, now approaching disastrous proportions, is not occurring in isolation. It is enabled by permissive regulatory and tax environments, exactly the kind produced by South Africa’s outdated an

Malaysia has significantly strengthened its anti-money laundering framework, particularly in its legal structures and supervisory mechanisms, marking a crucial development since the country’s 2015 mutual evaluation. Assessments by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) noted that while Malaysia has the capacity to manage complex, high-profile cases, persistent challenges remain in successfully prosecuting money laundering c

The Financial Conduct Authority has imposed a £44 million fine on Nationwide Building Society after identifying widespread and persistent weaknesses in its anti-money laundering controls over a period stretching from October 2016 to July 2021. According to the regulator, Nationwide failed to maintain adequate systems to ensure that customer due diligence and risk assessments for personal current account holders were kept up to date, while its transaction monitoring capabiliti

The Central Bank of Ireland has issued a warning to banks and ATM operators across the country to ensure that their systems are not being exploited to bypass EU sanctions. This alert comes after the regulator identified specific instances in which card transactions involved US-issued cards from Belgazprombank, a Belarusian bank that has been under EU sanctions since earlier this year. Belgazprombank was sanctioned for using the Central Bank of Russia’s financial messaging sys

A new World Inequality Report portrays a global economic structure sharply skewed in favour of a minuscule wealthy minority, revealing how concentrated wealth, regressive tax advantages, unpaid care labour, and climate impacts reinforce one another.   According to the findings, fewer than 60,000 of the world’s richest individuals — enough people to pack a football stadium — now possess more wealth than half of humanity combined. The authors underscore that extreme disparities

Italy’s far-reaching redesign of its online gambling framework is finally taking shape, and the results point toward a future where dominant incumbents thrive while smaller operators are pushed out of the market.   When the country implemented its long-anticipated overhaul in November 2025, it did so with the precision of a government intent on restructuring — not merely regulating — its digital gambling sector.   What had been discussed and delayed for nearly five years arri

French authorities again found themselves under intense scrutiny as new hearings in the Lafarge terrorism financing case brought forward sharply conflicting accounts of what government officials knew during the Syrian conflict and when they knew it. At the center of the proceedings were discrepancies between diplomatic narratives and corporate admissions, with the court poring over exchanges between Lafarge executives and state representatives that now frame a deeper investig

Financial crime remains an unrelenting global threat that constantly pushes authorities to adopt more advanced detection and prevention tools, and Bulgaria has moved decisively by intensifying its reliance on Open-Source Intelligence, OSINT, to reinforce its Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Financing of Terrorism, AML/CFT, architecture. The strength of any AML/CFT regime hinges on the sophistication of its Financial Intelligence Units and law enforcement bodies, which must p

Federal police in Argentina launched an extensive series of raids on Tuesday, targeting the headquarters of the Argentine Football Association (AFA) and at least 17 professional soccer clubs as part of a widening judicial investigation into suspected links with financial services firm Sur Finanzas, a company currently under scrutiny for alleged money laundering and tax evasion. Acting on orders issued by federal judge Luis Armella, officers executed more than 30 simultaneous

Eurobank announced on Wednesday that it has officially stepped into the role of principal employer for the MAP multi-employer provident fund based in Nicosia, a change that took effect on December 8. The bank characterised the move as a clear expression of confidence in the Cypriot economy and its long-term growth prospects.   “This development constitutes a significant upgrade for the fund and is expected to contribute substantially to the further enhancement of MAP’s corpor

Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance has issued an impact assessment for a draft decree intended to replace Decree 03/2017 on casino operations, a move that local outlet VietnamNet reports is aimed at clearing long-standing regulatory hurdles and bringing the legal framework into alignment with current national laws. The release comes shortly after two landmark decisions: the government’s approval of permanent locals gaming at Phu Quoc’s Corona Resort & Casino and the authorisation

Finland is preparing for one of the most significant shifts in its gambling landscape, as the country transitions from its long-standing state-controlled model to a fully regulated, licensed framework.   The Administrative Committee of the Finnish Parliament has now completed its report detailing the backbone of this reform — a reform that lawmakers expect to pass through Parliament without any further modifications.   The roadmap outlines several major milestones relevant fo

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

Eurobank and National Bank of Greece (NBG) have emerged at the top of European banking rankings for return on equity, according to a pan-European report by UBS, underscoring the sustained profitability and resilience of the Greek banking sector. The findings, shared by Greek business outlet Newmoney, place both Eurobank and NBG firmly in the upper echelons of the European ranking for return on equity, reflecting gains that are “not a cyclical phenomenon but is instead the res