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Jho Low of Cyprus: 1MDB fugitive’s passports keep police guessing

The revelation last week that fugitive Malaysian businessman Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, holds a Cypriot passport has sparked a fresh flurry of speculation over his whereabouts, as authorities attempt to track him down for alleged financial crimes linked to defunct state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad. The… Read More

INVESTIGATION: Dubai real estate links point to hidden Abacha loot

Twenty years after the controversial demise of one of Nigeria’s last military leaders, Sani Abacha, one sore thumb still aching local and international financial crime investigators is the full extent of his legacy of corruption. In the years since 2002, when the first insight into the depth of corruption during… Read More

Court thwarts bid to stop Satabank €1.5m release to ‘dirty oil’ suspect

Malta’s financial regulator has lost a bid to stop the shuttered Satabank from releasing funds from the bank account of an offshore company belonging to ‘Dirty Oil’ suspect Gordon Debono. Debono is facing criminal charges related to a €30 million oil-smuggling ring in Catania, Sicily, together with conspirators Darren Debono,… Read More

4th November 2019

Malaysia rejects Goldman Sachs offer of $2bn damages over 1MDB scandal

Malaysia has rejected an offer from Goldman Sachs of less than US$2bn in compensation over the 1MDB scandal, in contrast to the country’s publicly stated demand of US$7.5bn. Malaysia has charged Goldman and 17 current and former directors of its units for allegedly misleading investors over bond sales totalling… Read More

31st October 2019

U.S., Gulf Nations Sanction Iranian Financial Network in Joint Action

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and five other Gulf nations joined the U.S. in imposing sanctions on a financing network controlled by Iran’s military and several men linked to the Tehran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah. Top U.S. Treasury Department officials said the action is the largest ever by the Riyadh-based Terrorist Financing… Read More

30th October 2019

Blowing whistle on dirty money ‘wrecked my life’

Anna Waterhouse was a high-flying lawyer at Deutsche Bank in Dubai. Now she’s unemployed. Amjad Rihan was a partner at the accountancy giant EY’s Dubai office. He also lost his job and hasn’t worked for more than five years. They both say their lives were destroyed after they flagged… Read More

29th October 2019

EY: Gold, drug money and a major auditor’s ‘cover-up’

A major accountancy firm covered up evidence of smuggling and laundering of drug money by an organised crime gang, an investigation has revealed. EY failed to report suspicious activity at one of the world’s largest gold refineries and then altered a compliance report to hide the crime. BBC Panorama discovered… Read More

28th October 2019

How Jho Low, Wanted For History’s Biggest Heist, Parked His Money at an Obscure, Kuwaiti-Owned Bank

As Jho Low was becoming the public face of an embattled Malaysian sovereign wealth fund known as 1MDB, the financier made friends in high places. He dined with Leonardo di Caprio, bought diamonds for supermodel Miranda Kerr, and even financed the film production company that made the “Wolf of Wall… Read More

24th October 2019

Goldman Sachs Ousts Senior Mideast Banker Over Compliance Breach

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. dismissed a senior banker in the Middle East over compliance violations, according to people with knowledge of the matter, adding to the U.S. bank’s woes in the region. Martin Weber, who’d been with the bank for about 20 years, ran the financing division in the… Read More

17th October 2019

Malaysia ‘open’ to settling with Goldman and dropping 1MDB charges

Goldman Sachs has been negotiating with the Malaysian authorities to drop criminal charges against three of its subsidiaries in connection with three bond issues by 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB. The government is seeking $3.3 billion in compensation from the U.S. investment bank, accusing it of helping a Malaysian businessman… Read More

14th October 2019

Secret Recordings Describe Extensive Bribery at Mexico’s Pemex

In 2017, Israeli private investigation company Black Cube secretly recorded senior officials at Mexico’s Petróleos Mexicanos describing widespread bribery and corruption at the state-run oil company. The audio recordings are part of the evidence in a lawsuit filed last year against the Mexican government by a Mexican oil-field drilling company… Read More

8th October 2019

EU to keep U.S. islands on tax blacklist, drop UAE, Switzerland

European Union finance ministers are set to remove the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Switzerland next week from the bloc’s lists of countries deemed to be acting as tax havens, an EU document said. They will however continue to blacklist three U.S. territories. The 28-nation EU set up a blacklist… Read More

7th October 2019

Bank of Ireland accounts ‘used to launder €273m in OneCoin scam’

American prosecutors allege that the US lawyer Mark Scott laundered €273m in gains from the OneCoin global cryptocurrency scam via Bank of Ireland accounts. Four current and former bank executives — including Diane Sands, Bank of Ireland’s head of anti-money laundering — have been called to testify in the US… Read More

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