Popular images of international crime fighting are usually replete with bank heists, gun fights, drug smuggling, and undercover agents in dark suits and shades. But behind every global crime network supporting crimes, from terrorism to fraud, lies the vast and obscure business of money laundering...
A Texas money transfer company has pleaded guilty to federal charges that it failed to adequately maintain an anti-money laundering (AML) program, letting $167 million move overseas without oversight. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Ping Express pleaded guilty to that charge earlier this...
Digital payments FinTech Flutterwave has denied any wrongdoing after a court in Kenya froze its bank accounts. As Bloomberg News reported Thursday (July 7), Kenya’s High Court has locked the company out of its 52 multi-currency accounts, which are spread across three banks and hold...
The trade group UK Finance recently published its annual fraud report, and the picture isn’t pretty for British consumers. Financial fraud in the country rose by 39% between 2020 and 2021. Of the 1.3 billion pounds ($1.8 billion) defrauded in that period, 583 million pounds...
Too many countries lack legal frameworks to fight the use of cryptocurrency in money laundering or terrorist funding, according to a Paris-based intergovernmental group that promotes such standards, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said that of the 98 jurisdictions...
U.S. legislators say they are getting closer to adopting what could be the biggest anti-money laundering (AML) reforms in decades. As the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists reported Thursday (June 23), the bill, known as the Enablers Act, would amend the Bank Secrecy Act by...
The U.S. and U.K. governments announced on Monday (June 13) a new joint initiative to encourage the development of privacy-enhancing technology (PET) that could be used in the fight against money laundering. According to United Nations estimates, up to $2 trillion in cross-border money laundering...
The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) published a joint report on Thursday (June 1) advocating for the introduction in all relevant EU sectoral laws of a specific legal ground to revoke licenses for breaches of anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) rules. The European Banking...
U.S. prosecutors planned to send a message to the largely offshore crypto industry this week about the cost of ignoring the anti-money laundering (AML) laws at the core of an important chunk of financial regulation. And they did, but it wasn’t the one they wanted...
