Money Laundering

Reset Filter

Jurisdictions

Industry Sectors

Predicate Crimes

Enforcement

Regulatory Update

Featured Money Laundering

Burner phones and banking apps: Meet the Chinese ‘brokers’ laundering Mexican drug money

Early next year, a Chinese businessman named Gan Xianbing will be sentenced in a Chicago courtroom for laundering just over $530,000 in Mexican cartel drug money. Gan, 50, was convicted in February of money laundering and operating an unlicensed money-transfer business that whisked cartel cash from U.S. drug sales offshore. Read More

Ex-Uzbek Boss’s Daughter Gets Chance at Frozen $350 Million

Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of late Uzbek president Islam Karimov, won a court victory in Switzerland that allows her to try to unblock $350 million in frozen assets in the latest chapter of a almost $1 billion corruption scandal. A federal appeal court upheld her claim that she was the… Read More

Italian mafia probe shows banks exposure to massive alleged laundering scheme

By Scilla Alecci, ICIJ, 2 December 2020 ICIJ — Italian authorities investigated a businessman suspected of laundering billions of dollars for mafia associates using banks in a dozen countries around the world, according to the anti-mafia unit of Reggio Calabria, in Southern Italy. Roberto Recordare, an IT entrepreneur from… Read More

3rd December 2020

Cash Converters in AUSTRAC’s gunsights, as regulator sizes up next enforcement targets

Pawnbrokers, payday lenders and other non-bank reporting entities have been urged to review their financial crime controls, as the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) broadens its supervision and enforcement crackdown. The country’s largest payday lender, listed pawnbroker Cash Converters, is the latest reporting entity to be referred to AUSTRAC’s enforcement… Read More

3rd December 2020

Worldwide crackdown on money laundering ‘mules’: 422 arrests

Police forces in 26 European countries took part in a worldwide operation to crack down on money launderers and their unwitting recruits, Europol said. Operation EMMA 6 – the sixth European Money Mule Action – was organised between September and November this year, with the help of the European Banking… Read More

3rd December 2020

Australia’s plan for $10,000 cash ban ‘dead, dead and dead’

A plan to ban cash payments of $10,000 or more that threatened to split the Liberal Party has been dumped, with the move now “dead, dead and dead”. In a motion moved by One Nation, the Senate on Thursday officially dumped debate on the proposal that emerged from the government’s… Read More

3rd December 2020

Lebanon ex-army boss, intelligence heads charged with corruption

A Lebanese judge has filed corruption charges against eight former high-ranking security officers, including an ex-army chief and the former top brass of army intelligence, two judicial sources familiar with the matter said. The officers were formally accused of “committing the crime of illicit enrichment and exploiting their official positions… Read More

3rd December 2020

U.S. Chemical Companies Face Few Legal Risks, and the Cartels Bank On It

One November morning in 2015, a lawyer named Clark Jordan rose sheepishly from his chair to face the judge in a federal courtroom in eastern Pennsylvania. Jordan, then 51, had spent most of his adult life in corporate law, but this day was different. As a vice president of… Read More

2nd December 2020

What 6AMLD Doesn’t Say About Legal Liabilities

With only a day to go before the deadline for EU member-states to transpose the bloc’s Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (6AMLD), significant questions remain unanswered about how it will be enforced on a national-level. In an apparent response to recent banking scandals, the directive will make the “aiding and… Read More

2nd December 2020

UK’s Big Four auditors await shake-up as corruption probes add up

Britain’s audit sector, dominated by the so-called Big Four accountancy giants, is shortly expected to discover how it must reinvent itself amid a series of probes into alleged corruption, including one linked to the collapse of German electronic payments group Wirecard. UK authorities want the industry to separate audit and… Read More

2nd December 2020

U.K. Court Freezes Up to $5 Billion Tied to Alleged Kazakhstan Bank Theft

A U.K. civil court froze up to $5 billion in assets including stakes in luxury hotels, cash in bank accounts in half a dozen countries and a Burger King franchise, as part of an international legal saga that ensnared Kazakhstan’s richest businessmen, according to court documents. The Business and Property… Read More

2nd December 2020

EU, FATF lists causing correspondent banking problems in Bahamas

The Bahamas’ inclusion on the European Union’s (EU) black list and Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) gray list, has caused some local financial institutions to be refused service by correspondent banks, Attorney General Senator Carl Bethel said on Friday, adding that those lists have left The Bahamas at a competitive… Read More

2nd December 2020

Feds step up efforts to target Venezuelans accused of money laundering in Miami

Federal authorities are stepping up their efforts to seize millions of dollars deposited in Miami bank accounts that they say were used to pay kickbacks to Venezuelan government officials for inflated contracts with the national oil company, PDVSA. The latest target: Natalino D’Amato. The contractor is accused of selling $160… Read More

Must Read

Burner phones and banking apps: Meet the Chinese ‘brokers’ laundering Mexican drug money

Energy Trader Vitol Paying $163 Million to Settle Corruption, Manipulation Charges

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: The Limits of New Standards on Assessing WMD Financing Risk

EU budget deadlock will hamper crime fight, EPPO warns

Pope Francis’s Plan to Fix the Vatican’s Finances Meets Internal Resistance