Financial Crime

12th December 2019

Russia says its money laundering crackdown has halved suspicious cash operations

Russia has considerably reduced suspicious cash operations in the last nine months, preventing 886 billion roubles ($14 billion) from being taken into the shadow economy, the head of Russia’s financial monitoring agency said on Wednesday. Suspicious cash withdrawals in Russia have fallen 52% in the last nine months, said Rosfinmonitoring… Read More

11th December 2019

Banking: Is Moldova unreformable?

To visit Moldova is to be presented with a stark reminder of the difficulty of genuine reform. Since declaring independence in 1991, the Republic of Moldova, a tiny sliver of a country squeezed between Ukraine and Romania, has struggled for cohesion, meaning and identity. Since 1991, its population has shrunk… Read More

6th December 2019

Formations House leak shows need for reforms on creating companies, says anti-corruption chief

Boris Johnson’s anti-corruption champion has said that the UK must “clamp down harder” on corruption after an investigation revealed how a British company registered a global web of businesses linked to international crime gangs. John Penrose, who co-ordinates the response to corruption, said that Britain’s reputation for integrity was vital… Read More

5th December 2019

MEP calls on EU to initiate suspension procedures against Malta

The European Commission should open an investigation into the rule of law. Preparations must now be made for Article 7 proceedings against Malta, MEP Sven Giegold said today. Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union is a procedure to suspend certain rights from a member state. At the end of the two-day… Read More

5th December 2019

Remittance-dependent Tajikistan blocks Russian wire transfer service

A Russian wire transfer service popular among Tajik migrant labourers has been cut off from the Central Asian nation’s banking system, it said on Wednesday, after Dushanbe rerouted all remittances into a new processing centre. More than a million Tajiks work in Russia, sending home about $2.6 billion a year… Read More

4th December 2019

Swiss court rebuffs FINMA’s seizure of bank BSI money in 1MDB case

Swiss financial markets supervisor FINMA must reconsider its confiscation of 95 million Swiss francs ($95.27 million) from Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI), after a court called its calculation of the amount seized “incomprehensible”. BSI was bought by EFG International in 2016 from Brazil’s BTG Pactual after becoming tangled in legal… Read More

4th December 2019

Nordea Wins Danish Court Battle to Ban Staff Trading in Bitcoin

Nordea Bank is free to prevent its employees from investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in their own time, a Danish court ruled. The risks associated with cryptocurrencies justify the restriction, according to a verdict published on the Copenhagen-based court’s website late Monday. Denmark’s union for financial industry… Read More

2nd December 2019

Vatican Posed Security Threat, Says Financial Watchdog After Suspension

An international network of financial watchdogs said the Vatican’s handling of confidential information posed “an evident security threat to our organization,” in a statement explaining why it suspended the Vatican from access to its information earlier this month. The Egmont Group, a Toronto-based network of more than 160 national… Read More

29th November 2019

Ukraine’s central bank blames Kolomoisky for campaign of intimidation

Ukraine’s central bank has issued an unprecedented statement accusing local oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, the former owner of nationalized lender PrivatBank, of orchestrating a campaign of intimidation against the institution and its staff. The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has been targeted by protesters accusing the bank’s management of corruption and… Read More

29th November 2019

Top HSBC Risk Head to Take Sabbatical as Bank Faces BOE Warnings

HSBC Holdings Plc’s head of operational risk, who has been in the role for almost six years, has asked to take a sabbatical. Mark Cooke, whose role involves overseeing non-financial risks such as financial crime, staff misconduct and compliance breaches, has requested a sabbatical, the bank said in an email. Read More