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Westpac hit with child exploitation, money laundering claims

Australian financial crime watchdog, AUSTRAC, has applied for civil penalty orders against Westpac bank over 23 million instances of money laundering failures. Westpac had made 23 million breaches of Australian Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) laws, resulting in “serious and systemic non-compliance”, AUSTRAC said on Wednesday. Around 19.5 million… Read More

Vatican Loses Access to International Financial Watchdog Information

An international network of financial watchdogs has suspended the Vatican’s access to its information, dealing a major blow to the Vatican’s financial credibility under Pope Francis. The Egmont Group, a Toronto-based network of more than 160 national financial intelligence units around the world, has decided to suspend the Vatican watchdog… Read More

German police raid suspected hawala banking ring

German authorities have carried out a raid on an organized international network suspected of illegally transferring millions of euros to Turkey. Police searched about 60 apartments and offices in Tuesday’s early-morning raids across Germany. Officers say 27 people are suspected of being involved in the scheme; six arrest warrants have… Read More

20th November 2019

SEB Says It Ended Business With Most Clients Named in Report

SEB AB said it’s terminated business with the vast majority of customers identified by Swedish public broadcaster SVT in an investigative piece on money laundering. The bank has compared the 194 names provided by SVT with its own analysis and found that the clients had “previously been handled,” the… Read More

19th November 2019

The Vienna Bank Job

For years, banks in three Eastern European countries were stripped of assets by their owners using a blunt but efficient scheme made possible by Meinl Bank, a venerable Austrian financial institution that lost its license last week. Hundreds of millions of euros were siphoned out of Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania,… Read More

19th November 2019

EU committee demands end to passport sales

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) has called for a ban on investor citizenship and residence schemes across Europe, saying they pose serious risks of security, money laundering and tax evasion. The EESC endorsed a recent report of the European Parliament which also called for an end to… Read More

19th November 2019

BOV fined for money laundering breaches in two cases

Bank of Valletta has been fined a total of €57,500 in two cases involving breaches of its anti-money laundering obligations. A notice published on the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit’s (FIAU) website says that, in the first case, BOV failed to flag how a factory worker who was later unemployed continued… Read More

19th November 2019

Miami professor who wrote book on organized crime laundered millions in dirty money, feds say

For years, University of Miami professor and author Bruce Bagley served as a go-to quote for reporters writing about crime in the Americas. He spoke authoritatively on violent Mexican drug cartels, guerrilla politics in Colombia and violence in Haiti. But Bagley, the feds say, parlayed his mastery of Latin American… Read More

19th November 2019

Estonian FSA drops Swedbank probe, criminal investigation continues

Estonia’s Financial Supervision and Resolution Authority said on Monday it was dropping an investigation into Swedbank’s (SWEDa.ST) Estonia unit as the probe was now a criminal proceeding being handled by the country’s prosecutor. “The Financial Supervision Authority launched a sanction proceeding on October 28 to investigate the signs… Read More

19th November 2019

Head of Vatican financial regulator leaves job weeks after police raids

The Vatican said on Monday the head of its financial regulator would leave, weeks after unprecedented police raids on his organization and another key arm of the Catholic Church’s bureaucracy. Rene Bruelhart, a 47-year-old Swiss lawyer, told Reuters he had resigned from the top job at the Financial Information Authority… Read More

19th November 2019

Hacktivists target Cayman National Bank in Isle of Man

Cayman National Bank has announced that its subsidiaries in the Isle of Man were hacked by a well known hacking group on Sunday. Although the bank has not named that group, it appears from European media that it was Phineas Fisher, an infamous, anti-capitalist vigilante hacker group that targets… Read More

19th November 2019

Privinvest Salesman Takes Stand in Mozambique Corruption Trial

For six weeks Jean Boustani, a Lebanese salesman at a shipbuilding company, sat quietly in a New York court as prosecutors summoned 20 witnesses to support charges he defrauded U.S. investors in a $2 billion Mozambican kickback scam. On Monday, Boustani began to tell his side of the story to… Read More

19th November 2019

Lebanese banks to reopen as withdrawal limits made official

AP — Lebanon’s bank staff union announced Monday it’s ending a week-long strike after increased security and new regulations that officially limited withdrawal and dollar transfers. The union said banks will reopen Tuesday. Banks have been at the center of anti-government protests, as demonstrators accused them… Read More

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