Risk Management

The U.S. government is threatening to downgrade Fiji to the lowest tier in its global human trafficking rankings unless authorities take “decisive action” against a religious group linked to human trafficking and transnational organized crime, OCCRP reported. 

Major U.S. chipmakers Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Texas Instruments, along with a Warren Buffett–owned electronics distributor, are facing a series of lawsuits accusing them of failing to prevent their semiconductors from ending up in Russian missiles and drones used to attack civilians in Ukraine.

Nine of the largest U.S. lenders made “inappropriate distinctions” among customers in politically sensitive sectors, including by applying enhanced risk controls in response to negative media reports, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said. 

Federal police raided the headquarters of the Argentine Football Association (AFA) and more than 30 soccer clubs as part of an investigation into alleged money laundering involving a key sponsor of the game, CNN said.

Mexican federal authorities have taken former Chihuahua governor César Duarte back into custody, preparing to charge him with laundering public funds allegedly diverted while he was in office, according to the Associated Press.

Law enforcement raids on luxury Kyiv apartments, including one bathroom fitted with a golden toilet, and images of duffel bags stuffed with cash have plunged President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration into its biggest corruption crisis since he took office, the Financial Times 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.

Meta internally projected late last year that roughly 10% of its 2024 revenue, or approximately $16 billion, would come from advertising tied to scams and banned goods, according to company documents reviewed by Reuters. 

Brazil’s central bank is changing how capital requirements are calculated for financial institutions following a recent spate of probes into organized crime groups exploiting the services offered at Fintech firms, Bloomberg reported. 

Federal Reserve officials plan to shrink the regulatory body’s bank-supervision workforce by roughly 30% by the end of next year, leaving roughly 350 employees in the Supervision & Regulation (S&R) division, according to an internal memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.