Category: Financial Crime

The Financial Action Task Force concluded its October 2026 Plenary in Paris on 30 October, the first under the UK Presidency of Giles Thomson. Delegates agreed action on evolving threats including virtual assets and fraud. Four jurisdictions were removed from the list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring (the grey list) after completing their action plans: Bulgaria, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Monaco. No jurisdictions were added, reducing the grey list from 22 to 18. The call-for-action (black) list was unchanged. Following the April 2026 Ministerial Declaration, the Plenary also agreed to accelerate implementation of the FATF…

The FCA has opened a consultation on changes to its Financial Crime Guide, intended to help firms assess and strengthen their financial crime systems and controls. The proposals draw on recent supervisory work and wider developments in the risk landscape. Areas covered include fraud, reflecting lessons from multi-firm work; proliferation financing, where the FCA proposes fuller guidance on risks and controls; and expectations for firms using Banking-as-a-Service models, including outsourced, white-labelled and embedded finance arrangements. The updates also anticipate cryptoasset firms coming under FCA authorisation. The Guide contains no new rules but sets out self-assessment questions and examples of good…

In a guest commentary for RUSI, Albertus Geldenhuys argues that the European Commission’s plans for a nature credits market have not yet considered financial crime. The Commission’s 2025 roadmap deals with greenwashing and double counting but does not address fraud or money laundering, or say who in the market must carry out customer due diligence. He draws on the EU carbon market’s history of VAT fraud, registry breaches and late application of AML safeguards, and on Interpol’s typology of carbon market crime, arguing that nature credits are, if anything, more exposed. Outcomes are hard to verify independently, and payments flow…

Italian authorities have dismantled a major underground illegal bank that moved up to 100 million euros ($116 million) annually to finance operations for domestic and international drug traffickers and organized crime syndicates, police announced Monday. The illicit bank, operated since 2021 by a Chinese national, is believed to have processed payments between 80 and 100 million euros ($93-116 million) a year over at least a three-year period. Headquartered in the Tuscan city of Prato, the bank had established branches in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. According to investigators, among the bank’s clients were the Italian mafia organizations ‘Ndrangheta,…

A German man with a history of black market banking allegations was recently sentenced to three years and 10 months in prison for moving 33 million euros in illicit funds through the international financial system. Gerard Grischew was sentenced on June 10 in the Berlin Regional Court after pleading guilty to charges of forging documents and operating an unregistered banking system. He will appeal the length of his sentence, his lawyers told the court. Prosecutors said Grischew used forged IDs and strawmen to set up more than dozen companies with accounts at German banks. He allegedly used those accounts to…

In a stark illustration of the sprawling scale and violent stakes of Taiwan’s criminal underworld, authorities announced the indictment of 10 individuals in a $1.03 billion money laundering scheme on the same day a notorious gambling fugitive was assassinated in Cambodia. The twin developments highlight how Taiwanese illicit financial networks routinely exploit regional borders to wash illegal proceeds and evade justice across Southeast Asia. According to a statement from the Yunlin District Prosecutors Office, a sophisticated criminal syndicate successfully laundered more than NT$33 billion ($1.03 billion) in illegal gambling profits by exploiting credit card loopholes on the gaming floors of Macau,…

Financial fraud is now one of the world’s most severe and rapidly evolving transnational crimes, with significant economic and human consequences.The 2026 INTERPOL Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment warns that with increased global criminal collaboration, fraud is no longer a peripheral threat, it is at the centre of polycriminality, intersecting with organized crime, human trafficking and cybercrime.Key findings include:AI-enhanced fraud is 4.5 times more profitable than traditional methods. “Agentic AI” systems can autonomously plan and execute complete fraud campaigns – from reconnaissance to ransom demands.Sextortion is now being systematically integrated into scams such as romance and investment fraud often using…

An Algerian court sentenced former Labor Minister Tijani Hassan Haddam to seven years in prison for embezzling roughly $45 million during his time as director of the National Social Security Fund from 2015 to 2019, local media reported. Haddam was also fined 1 million dinars ($7,719) and ordered to pay 2 million dinars ($15,433) in compensation to the public treasury, while he and other defendants must jointly repay the fund 100 million dinars ($771,687) in damages. The case centers on a controversial property purchase in Algiers, which Haddam claimed was for the social security fund. The real estate developer involved…

The European Banking Authority (EBA) has reported substantial improvements in how EU and EEA Member States supervise banks for money laundering and terrorist financing risks, marking the conclusion of a six-year review project. In a report published on 8 October 2025, the EBA said that competent authorities have made “significant progress” in adopting risk-based approaches to anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) supervision, even as many grappled with resource constraints and reform challenges. Between 2018 and 2024, the EBA carried out in-depth reviews of 40 national competent authorities (NCAs), examining their strategies, supervisory practices, and use of…

The Swiss government has tasked the Federal Department of Justice and Police with presenting concrete options by the end of 2026. Under constant pressure, MROS (the Money Laundering Reporting Office) is in a critical situation, the Federal Council explained on Friday. This assessment was echoed by the Swiss Federal Audit Office in a report published this week. It warned that insufficient resources were preventing MROS from fully fulfilling its legal mandate. Overwhelmed with informationThis office receives reports of suspected money laundering and terrorist financing. These reports are sent to it by financial intermediaries, such as banks. However, MROS is overwhelmed…

Brussels told Slovakia it risked doing “irreparable damage” to the rule of law, it has emerged, before the country’s MPs approved legal reforms that critics say are aimed at protecting the prime minister’s political and business allies. The Slovakian news outlet SME reported on Wednesday that the European commissioner for justice, Didier Reynders, had written last week to Robert Fico’s government urging it not to fast-track the legislative package through parliament. The request was ignored and the changes – including scrapping a special prosecutor’s office dealing with high-level corruption, lowering penalties for financial crimes and cutting the statute of limitations…

The world is getting smaller, as trade, communication and infrastructure on a global scale brings us closer together. However, there is another, darker, side to the coin: our interconnected world is being abused by criminals who have created an underground economy to sustain their illegal operations. Europol’s first ever threat assessment on the topic, ‘The other side of the coin: an analysis of financial and economic crime in the EU’, sheds a light on this system which, from the shadows, sustains the finances of criminals worldwide. The report is based on a combination of operational insights and strategic intelligence contributed…

The threat from serious and organised crime is increasing year on year, yet an up-to-date articulation of the government’s strategic approach is missing in action. Five years ago, in November 2018, the UK’s newly published Serious and Organised Crime Strategy pledged to leave ‘no safe space’ for serious and organised criminals to operate. Promising a whole-system approach, the strategy was the first to set out how the UK would ‘mobilise the full force of the state, aligning our collective efforts to … disrupt serious and organised criminals’ as ‘one cohesive system’. Launching the strategy at the top of The Shard,…

Last year, the US published its 2022 National Illicit Finance Strategy, providing a roadmap to close the loopholes that criminals and illicit actors exploit. It outlines four main priorities and 14 supporting actions: Increase transparency and close legal and regulatory gaps in the US AML/CFT frameworkMake AML/CFT regulatory framework for financial institutions more efficient and effectiveEnhance operational effectiveness in combating illicit financeSupport technological innovation and harness technology to mitigate illicit finance risksIn this article, I’m going to look at the latest developments across the US AML/CFT regime which it can be argued remains a model of effectiveness and innovation. Treasury…

Huge swathes of Russian money are being diverted from Europe to Dubai as Western sanctions increase pressure on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Last week, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) placed United Arab Emirates on a “grey list”, singling out the Gulf nation for greater scrutiny with regards to potential for money-laundering. A high-profile business hub, UAE has always attracted the world’s mega-rich. Its present reluctance to side with either the West or the Kremlin has sent out a message to Russians that their money will still be protected there. UAE has also failed to match sanctions imposed…

“It’s not like anyone sat down in London and said, ‘how do we attract all this money?’. There isn’t an ‘attract illicit finance to the UK’ strategy department in the Cabinet Office”. Yet over decades of experience monitoring the financial connections between the UK and Russia, Tom Keatinge has seen that whenever our government has had the opportunity to address international money laundering and tax avoidance, “it always seems to have gone in the direction of enabling this to occur. Doors have been left ajar.” Two and half weeks after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, the British government was scrambling…

Seven years ago, an anonymous source who went by the name “John Doe” provided us with the data that became the Panama Papers – 2.6 terabytes of leaked documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The leak turned out to have quite an impressive Russian component. We found shell companies connected to Vladimir Putin’s judo friends, Boris and Arkady Rotenberg, to the oligarch Alisher Usmanov and the wife of the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. But, most significantly, we stumbled across Sergej Roldugin, a professional cellist and godfather of Putin’s eldest daughter, who had a central role in a network…

FRANKFURT, March 11 (Reuters) – Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), which faced stinging criticism from some investors and politicians for its ongoing ties to Russia, said on Friday in a surprise move that it would wind down its business in the country. Deutsche joins the ranks of Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N), which were the first major U.S. banks to exit after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Those moves put pressure on rivals to follow. read more . Deutsche had resisted pressure to sever ties, arguing that it needed to support multinational firms doing business in Russia. But on Friday evening…

Fast Facts We reviewed how transnational criminal organizations and terrorist groups traffic goods such as illegal drugs, engage in human trafficking, and launder money. We also looked at the information sharing used to help detect these activities. Responsibility for combating trafficking is spread across multiple federal agencies. Agencies collaborate via task forces that share information and resources with each other, the private sector, and foreign counterparts. The U.S. Treasury Department, for example, shares information with more than 160 international financial intelligence agencies. Criminal groups move heroin and more from Afghanistan to western Europe via the Balkan route. Highlights What GAO…

Suspicious activity reports (SARs) are a vital part of the fight against money laundering and financial crime. They alert law enforcement to potential criminal activity, providing critical evidence in any investigation. The U.K. National Crime Agency (NCA) reported a record number of SARs received and processed (573,085—a 20 percent increase on the previous period) in 2019/20. The majority of reports were submitted by credit institutions, such as banks and building societies. Few SARs were submitted from the service sector, such as accountants, lawyers, and estate agents. Banks’ systems focus on the financial transactions they administer, highlighting those that either breach…

In the UK context when you think about white-collar crime over the last couple of decades, names like Barings Bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and Polly Peck come to mind. While we haven’t seen bumper cases like these in more recent times, white-collar crime continues to make the front pages and statistics have revealed that corporate fraud has increased during the pandemic. From a legal point of view, it remains a thicket when it comes to the processes in place. The recent postponement of a trial against three former G4S executives accused of defrauding the taxpayer…

After the UK left the European Union, a range of payment providers reported so-called IBAN discrimination as a number of companies across Europe began to refuse Euro account bank details if they contained the country code ‘GB’. As a result of Brexit, sending a payment to Eurozone countries resulted in additional charges. Whilst the fee is nominal, it means that payments can be short of the required full amount being sent. In an exclusive interview with City A.M., rising City star Anastasia Demetriou, a former Howard Kennedy solicitor and currently general counsel at IFX Payments in London, warns that without…

Cultural property crime has continued unabated throughout the global COVID-19 pandemic and in some cases even surged to new heights, INTERPOL’s 2020 Assessing Crimes Against Cultural Property survey finds. The first such report compiled since the onset of the pandemic – and the first made publicly available – the survey leverages information supplied by 72 INTERPOL member countries on cultural property crimes, arrests and trafficking routes in 2020. The consolidated intelligence allows INTERPOL to analyze and compare emerging trends around the world. In total, 854,742 cultural property objects were seized globally in 2020, including numismatic items (coins, money or medals),…