Illicit Finance

One of the world’s oldest marketplaces is doubling as a modern hub for sanctions evasion and large-scale money laundering, according to experts who spoke to The New York Post.

European Union lawmakers voted Monday to dramatically scale back two flagship sustainability rules, narrowing their scope to the bloc’s largest companies after months of pushback from industry, Bloomberg reported. 

The world’s top financial watchdog warned that a sharp run-up in global asset prices has left markets vulnerable to the potential for a crash given current economic and geopolitical uncertainties.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said new federal guidance on Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) is intended to ease banks’ “pain points” and shift U.S. anti-money laundering oversight toward measurable effectiveness.

Spanish authorities have seized property linked to Nikolai Kolesov, the chief executive of state-owned Russian Helicopters, on suspicion of money laundering, according to an anti-corruption group founded by the late Alexei Navalny. 

The United States has removed former Paraguayan president Horacio Cartes from its sanctions list, a shift that comes amid warmer ties between the Trump administration and President Santiago Peña’s conservative government, Bloomberg reported.

Pope Leo XIV has approved new rules that redistribute control over the Holy See’s financial investments, diluting the exclusive authority the Vatican Bank has held since 2022 and formalizing a shared model of oversight across church institutions.

NIQ, the world’s largest consumer-data provider, has been conducting business in occupied Ukraine despite international sanctions against the Russian Federation, the Financial Times reported. 

A British national pleaded guilty on Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court for his role in a fraud scheme that took nearly $100 million from victims who funded loans to fake wine collectors, Reuters said. 

The son of a Chinese-born Uyghur oligarch who allegedly ran a massive smuggling and money-laundering ring has purchased a former church in North London for more than $3 million and converted it into a mosque and cultural center, OCCRP reported.