Oversight Agency

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Iranian oil tycoon Hossein Shamkhani violated sanctions while using a global network of banks, according to Bloomberg.

Germany’s financial watchdog BaFin has imposed a record €45-million penalty on JPMorgan Chase for shortcomings in anti-money laundering (AML) controls, the Financial Times reported, citing the supervisory body. 

The U.S. Treasury Department eased parts of its Belarus sanctions regime on Tuesday, lifting measures on the state airline Belavia and authorizing certain transactions tied to President Alexander Lukashenko’s presidential aircraft, Reuters reported. 

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned eight individuals and two entities allegedly tied to laundering illicit proceeds from DPRK cybercrime and overseas IT work. 

British authorities have seized more than £12 million ($15.6 million) worth of fossilized dinosaur bones as part of a court-approved settlement with Chinese national Su Binghai, a suspect in a sprawling money-laundering scandal that has reverberated from Singapore to London, Bloomberg said. 

Federal prosecutors examined Jeffrey Epstein for money laundering and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in 2007, according to emails from the deceased sex trafficker’s personal Yahoo account obtained by Bloomberg.

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.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Thursday blacklisted a Mexican human-smuggling ring, imposing sanctions against four individuals and 16 companies it says helped illegally migrate to the United States.  The Cancun-based Bhardwaj Human Smuggling Organization has illicitly transported thousands of people from Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Asia […]

Australia’s financial crimes watchdog has fined a second crypto ATM provider in a widening crackdown on machines increasingly linked to money laundering and scams, the country’s ABC News reported. 

Mexico’s banking lobby is urging lenders to adopt tougher rules on illicit finance that go beyond current law, after U.S. authorities moved to sever three Mexican firms from the American financial system for allegedly laundering money for fentanyl traffickers, according to Bloomberg.