AML

China’s central bank has restated its hard line on cryptocurrencies, warning that a renewed wave of speculation is testing regulators and vowing tougher action against illegal activities involving stablecoins, according to Reuters.

Switzerland’s attorney general has filed criminal charges against UBS and a former Credit Suisse compliance officer, alleging failures to prevent money laundering linked to the long-running Mozambique “tuna bonds” scandal, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has launched a consultation to overhaul the country’s transaction reporting regime, promising both stronger tools to combat financial crime and a lighter reporting burden for firms.

A Singapore court has allowed a $2.7-billion lawsuit against Standard Chartered Bank to proceed over its alleged role in the looting of Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign fund, according to Reuters.

Fugitive former Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek has been linked to a sprawling, multibillion-dollar money laundering network that British investigators say connects street-level drug dealers in the UK to sanctioned Russian oligarchs and the Kremlin’s security services, the Financial Times reported.

A group of former Chinese American employees has filed a class-action lawsuit against Toronto-Dominion Bank in the United States, alleging they were unjustly fired after being linked to a major money laundering scandal involving Chinese money brokers and Mexican drug cartels, the Financial Post reported. 

French investigators have stepped up their probe into alleged corruption at Patrick Drahi’s Altice telecoms group with a series of coordinated raids across the country, seizing cash, luxury goods and other assets, Bloomberg reported.

Singapore is facing renewed scrutiny over its defenses against dirty money after police seized hundreds of millions of dollars in assets linked to the Prince Group, a conglomerate labelled by U.S. and UK authorities as a “transnational criminal empire,” according to the Financial Times.

Wildlife traffickers are funneling dirty money through the same financial pipelines used for such illicit activity as human trafficking, child sexual exploitation, and the illegal sale of weapons around the world, according to new University of Waterloo research cited by CBC News. 

Brazil’s central bank unveiled long-awaited rules for virtual assets on Monday, extending anti–money laundering (AML) and counterterrorism financing (CTF) obligations to crypto firms and classifying fiat-pegged crypto transactions as foreign-exchange operations, Reuters reported.