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Financial Crime
Financial crime news from MLex includes fraud, money laundering, bribery and corruption cases across the globe. As an MLex subscriber, you’ll gain exclusive access to not only the latest enforcement, policymaking and legislation, but also forensic coverage of international and cross-jurisdictional investigations—helping you or your clients identify potential compliance and business risks. The selected stories below represent some of the latest financial crime reporting from our investigative journalists across the globe.
Recent Financial Crime articles
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Brazil must redouble its efforts to fight corruption, OECD Anti-Illicit Trade Expert Group Chair David Luna told MLex. -
Tom Tugendhat indicated that the government would look to introduce a “failure to prevent” measure in the country’s House of Lords -
Binance, has written to lawmakers in the UK to assure them it was not responsible for the downfall of its rival FTX. -
Halkbank, will claim that it cannot face US prosecution because it is majority owned by the Turkish state -
London punished Glencore for bribery in Africa, handing the global commodities trader a fine of 276 million pounds -
UK’s economic crime laws, handing more power to fraud enforcers, represents a big step in the fight against dirty money -
Malaysia’s former prime minister to jail, followed by the conviction of his wife just a week later -
A recent appellate decision may pull the US further out of compliance with an international anti-bribery agreement -
India’s increasingly assertive financial crime-fighting agency received a shot in the arm -
The prosecution of Shell and Eni in Italy over allegations of bribery over a $1.3 billion Nigerian oil license deal -
FBI shows it can trace digital currency on blockchain, debunking myth that criminals can hide cryptocurrency assets -
Deripaska’s petition to overturn the designation, coupled with a Supreme Court decision -
US SEC again signals the agency’s return to the Obama administration’s whistleblower-defense activism. -
Glencore and several subsidiaries admitted paying more than $100 million in bribes to officials in Africa and South America -
A company bottling drinks for Coca-Cola gives example of how a business that ignores the UK Bribery Act may end up punished in court. -
Financial regulators urged banks to experiment with new products to help combat money laundering and other illicit financial activity -
A cryptocurrency disconnect is fast growing between the UK government and regulators. -
Former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng made Goldman's initial contact with a financier charged with orchestrating the 1MDB bribery and money laundering -
Social media platforms and online search engines will be legally responsible for fraudulent promotions on their sites -
The use of cryptocurrencies to circumvent Russian economic sanctions looks set to fail as policymakers pledge to crack down on illegal activity -
UK introduce new economic crime laws, but any new legislation must be matched by funding to help enforcers -
US investigations of sanctioned Russian oligarchs in the year since Moscow began its invasion of Ukraine -
Credit Suisse could be the first major Swiss bank to be found guilty of money laundering failures in its home country -
SFO's failure to charge individuals linked to Amec Foster Wheeler Energy's bribery has been thrown into the spotlight -
HP has won its multibillion-dollar claim against Autonomy’s founder, Mike Lynch, and former CFO, Sushovan Hussain -
Administration plan to fight corruption rests on staid principles, adds new initiatives -
Overturning of a former Unaoil executive’s bribery conviction, a setback for the UK's SFO in its case against the Monaco-based oil consultancy -
After significant results in major investigations over the past decade, the anticorruption environment in Brazil faces big challenges. -
An EBA probe into money laundering at Danske Bank saw Danish and Estonian regulators in effect acting as judges in their own trial in a key April 2019 vote. -
Credit Suisse’s $475 million hit for serious financial-crime failings warns banks of the risks in doing business in parts of the world dogged by corruption. -
NatWest’s guilty pleas to criminal charges of money-laundering failures can be understood as an early result -
A single whistleblower has received a near-record $110 million US Securities and Exchange Commission payout -
A slate of US anticorruption legislation, including a bill that would outlaw the solicitation of bribes by foreign officials -
BitMEX is likely just the first overseas cryptocurrency exchange with US customers that will get whacked by American regulators -
The EU banking watchdog's handling of probes into money laundering at Danske Bank and Pilatus Bank.
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Organized criminals will eventually use artificial intelligence for money laundering. -
UK Bribery Act, which has helped the UK become one of the top enforcers of global bribery settlements. -
A private investigator working for ENRC said that he leaked confidential information to the press. -
Singapore companies are scrambling to gather and report data on who ultimately owns and controls their companies. -
Beneficial ownership policy and practice will come into sharper focus this spring and summer as multinational bodies discuss global standards. -
NAB is under investigation in Australia after regulators identified “serious concerns” with the bank’s compliance with AML laws. -
In Jakarta, almost 1,300 employees of Indonesia’s anticorruption agency are being inaugurated as official members of the civil service. -
Philippines AMLC will consider taking action against companies and individuals that have filed inadequate STRs. -
When lawyers for the UK arm of Eurasian Resources Group stand up at the High Court in London and kick off weeks of argument that the Serious Fraud Office owes the company tens of millions of pounds. -
A new EU-wide money laundering watchdog will hold both supervisory and intelligence functions to fight illicit financial flows across the bloc by 2026. -
KPMG is in settlement negotiations with the Malaysian government over work it did for the scandal-hit sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB. -
South Korea's Daewoo E&C has sought to avoid any blame after two of its employees pleaded guilty to bribery charges. -
Latvian bank ABLV’s legal defeat at the EU’s top court today opens the door to other judicial challenges. -
Indonesia’s anti-graft activists managed to get a key amendment to the corruption law canceled by the Constitutional Court. -
Former Barbados cabinet minister Donville Inniss, sentenced last week in the US for laundering bribe money.
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A judge’s order for two former Serco executives to be acquitted of fraud charges is not just a humiliation for the SFO. -
Petroecuador's recent loss in a bid to secure payment from a bribe payer reinforces an emerging legal bulwark. -
A money laundering charge against McAfee was unveiled by the US, based on the illegal touting schemes for which he also has been charged. -
Any US Federal Reserve-issued digital currency should be designed to protect the privacy and personal data of individuals and businesses that use it. -
Australia has failed to bring lawyers, accountants, real estate agents and trust and company service providers under the country’s anti-money laundering law. -
More than one year since allegations emerged that Chinese online gambling company 500.com had paid bribes in Japan. -
In US anticorruption enforcement, a new administration means new bosses at the US Justice Department. New policies, probably not so much... -
Proposed US cryptocurrency regulations for virtual currencies has generated comments from users who say they're impractical and an assault on their rights.
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Canada’s export credit agency, provided a credit facility of up to $135 million to help finance a deal where Bombardier allegedly paid bribes to win business in Indonesia. -
The marathon Italian prosecution of Royal Dutch Shell & Eni on charges of paying $1 billion in bribes in Nigeria is now finally in the home stretch. -
The anti-corruption chapter in a trade agreement forged between the US and Brazil is a step in the right direction to curb transnational white-collar crime. -
Goldman Sach's milestone Foreign Corrupt Practices Act settlement with US agencies cements what has become a new reality in anticorruption enforcement: the multibillion-dollar mega settlement. -
The British slice of Goldman Sachs’ hefty global 1MDB settlement represented a modest 5 percent of the $2.3 billion total. -
Hong Kong’s securities regulator was keen to emphasize today that its $350 million fine against Goldman Sachs — the largest fine in the city’s history. -
The FinCEN Files show that banks and other financial institutions should be playing a greater role in disrupting and preventing financial crimes early on. -
The current legal safeguard for whistleblowers in the UK is "toothless, overly complex and lacks the backing it needs to be effective."
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Deloitte executives reading newspaper headlines would be forgiven for finding more to grimace about there than in the multimillion-pound malpractice fine. -
Canada's SNC Lavalin, seemingly clear of a bribery scandal after a settlement in December, faces new headaches in Brazilian corruption charges. -
Brazilian federal prosecutors filed charges against international companies for their alleged involvement in a corruption scheme at Eletronuclear. -
A legal case taken by Wirecard investors against the German financial regulator BaFin is in “uncharted waters”. -
The head of the UK's white-collar crime agency has seen pressure on her intensify, with a complaint alleging “serious professional misconduct” by Lisa Osofsky. -
Goldman Sachs’ settlement with the Malaysian government in the 1MDB scandal makes it “impossible” to convict former banker Roger Ng in Malaysia.
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A swoop by US prosecutors on Saman Ahsani sparked an extraordinary row between the two countries’ fraud agencies. -
Commerzbank’s multimillion-pound fine for money-laundering failings tells a familiar sorry tale of an under-resourced & stretched financial-crime department.
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A mammoth fine dished out to Commerzbank by the UK financial services regulator is a taste of things to come, as fraud is driven by Covid-19. -
PrivatBank has cases in play around the world in its long-running bid to claw back billions of dollars that it claims were spirited away by two former owners. -
Companies supplying the government with essential products during the pandemic must pay extra attention to their negotiations and pricing. -
A “Wild West” approach to healthcare procurement during the Covid-19 crisis led an antibribery group to fast-track pandemic-linked corruption research. -
Recently, international lenders have extended debt relief to the world's poorest countries, but many of those countries are also among the world's most corrupt. -
Companies will suffer financial loss and potential enforcement action unless whistleblowing measures are taken seriously during the Covid-19 pandemic. -
Companies face an unprecedented economic downturn amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and with it, unprecedented pressure to stay afloat as revenue dwindles. The reduction of business opportunities, particularly in the hard-hit developing world, will likely see companies turn to bribery to secure cash. -
It’s been a hundred days since Indonesia’s new team of anti-graft leaders took the helm of the respected anti-corruption agency amid a cloud of controversy, yet it appears to have done little to assuage fears that the commission would not weaken under them. -
Whistleblowers wishing to report fraud, bribery and other violations to the US Securities and Exchange Commission can still do so, and the commission will still process the reports in the face of coronavirus protection protocols, the SEC said. -
EU banks and other entities at high risk for money laundering might face on-site visits from the bloc's inspectors under plans being drawn up by the European Commission, MLex has learned. -
Major oil, gas and mining companies joined US lawmakers in telling the US Securities and Exchange Commission that a proposed disclosure rule should require publicly traded firms in the extractive sector to report government payments on a project-by-project basis. As written, the SEC proposal would only require that the firms report summaries of the payments. -
Petrochemical giant Braskem, a Petrobras-Odebrecht joint-venture, is the first company under a leniency deal in Brazil to have its compliance program certificated by independent auditors. -
Any US-UK trade agreement should include provisions aimed at fighting corruption, representatives of both governments have said. That sentiment, although absent from a recent US-China trade deal, reflects a growing international movement toward considering corruption a trade issue. -
An $8.8 trillion gap in the reported value of international trade of developing countries over a 10-year span is due in part to exploitation of the system by financial criminals said a transparency think tank that studied discrepancies between import and export figures. -
Facebook's proposed digital currency, Libra, poses such a disruptive threat that it is causing regulators to consider how they can cut costs in the cross-border payments market, according to a new study from the Bank for International Settlements, or BIS. -
Banks' ability to lend could be seriously hit if central banks develop digital currencies without industry involvement, a lobby group has warned EU financial services commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis. -
A former prosecutor fired by the UK's Serious Fraud Office for gross misconduct won't face any action by the country's Solicitors Regulation Authority, a body governing lawyers, MLex has learned. -
The US overtook Switzerland as the most complicit country in helping people hide wealth, said the Tax Justice Network, a UK-based group that tracks global financial secrecy. Switzerland, which had ranked worst on TJN's Financial Secrecy Index since 2011, improved its performance under Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development standards while US transparency regulation worsened, the group said today. -
Real estate professionals and lawyers in the US are not subject to adequate anti-money laundering requirements, creating "significant vulnerabilities" that can be exploited, the Treasury Department said. -
Is the bark of the UK's Serious Fraud Office worse than its bite? Observers might be forgiven for thinking so, given the trifling fine handed to a billionaire's daughter for refusing to hand the SFO evidence in a corruption probe. -
UK efforts to prosecute individuals on corruption charges linked to Airbus are likely to avoid French "blocking" laws but could be hindered by France's own efforts to prosecute wrongdoing. -
Recent changes to South Korea's anti-corruption regime that introduce tougher penalties and wire-tapping powers in foreign bribery cases are a welcome move and come in response to OECD recommendations. -
When the latest update of EU rules to fight money laundering took effect last week, they were accompanied in the UK by a flurry of regulatory reminders and warnings that a new era was beginning. -
Recent and upcoming US sentencings in a Venezuelan oil sector bribery scheme are set to close about 20-related prosecutions that grew and lingered in US federal court for years. But these cases, based on crimes in Miami and Houston, are just a few of many emanating from Venezuela's political chaos and casting a range of risk on US businesses. -
After a year that set a record for corporate settlements of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, the US is preparing new laws and regulations that would increase corporate transparency in a push to reduce corruption. -
Oil, gas and mining firms would still be able to hide important information about their payments to governments under a proposed US Securities and Exchange Commission "transparency" rule setting requirements for publicly traded extraction companies to disclose such payments, the two Democratic members of the SEC said today. -
A prosecutor fired from the UK's Serious Fraud Office for gross misconduct has had his unfair dismissal case against the agency postponed until next year, MLex has learned. -
Malaysia should adopt deferred prosecution agreements before enforcing its failure-to-prevent-bribery offense, the head of the country’s anticorruption agency has told MLex. -
Latheefa Koya's life took a sudden twist when she was asked by Malaysia's prime minister to head up the country's anticorruption agency. After accepting the job — a call of duty she felt compelled to answer — she got her feet under the desk in June and is now just over four months into her two-year term. -
Brazil faces an emergency visit by global experts on bribery next month following concerns about political interference in the country’s attempts to stamp out corruption, MLex has learned. -
The case of an Airbus unit embroiled in a UK corruption probe for seven years is to be raised by a global antibribery standards body pressing for it to be resolved, MLex has learned. -
With uncharacteristic haste, Indonesia’s outgoing legislative assembly today approved in a plenary meeting a controversial bill that has been widely criticized for being aimed at weakening the country’s highly respected anticorruption agency. -
Plans to overhaul the law that that governs Indonesia’s anti-graft agency risk breaching international anticorruption conventions, a senior OECD expert warned. -
Former UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s attempts to disband the Serious Fraud Office undermined the agency and led to resources being diverted from fighting financial crime, its former head has said.
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Companies could be offered fine discounts of up to 75 percent to incentivize them to self-report corruption issues, the former head of the UK’s Serious Fraud Office said today. -
Eurasian Resources Group's UK unit “knew” that its former lawyer disclosed suspected criminality at the Kazakh miner to the Serious Fraud Office, the agency said in its defense against a 70 million-pound civil claim ($86 million). -
Whistleblowers are becoming an increasingly important resource for detecting Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, US enforcement officials said today. -
Although internationally backed commissions that pursue corruption cases in Guatemala and Honduras are set to disband in coming months, their successes in prosecuting officials will leave a legacy that the countries can build upon, a former Guatemalan prosecutor said. -
Companies in the UK look unlikely to get new economic-crime prevention requirements soon, as the government is considering shifting pursuit of the reforms to the Law Commission, MLex has learned. -
Efforts to combat corruption as a trade barrier are gaining ground, as trade deals are starting to deal with corruption issues more directly. -
Walmart's compliance, investigatory and remediation efforts have already cost the retailing giant more than triple the $282 million it must pay the US to resolve Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations. Retaining a high-profile independent monitor and otherwise meeting the terms of a non-prosecution agreement will add to the compliance costs. -
Unaoil has seen UK fraud investigators call a halt to a three-year bribery probe, MLex has learned. -
Just over a year since Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was elected to office on an anticorruption platform, reforms are well under way. His government has created the Governance, Integrity and Anti-Corruption Centre, or GIACC, which has been tasked with recommending and implementing nationwide anticorruption policies and monitoring all anti-graft agencies. -
The Serious Fraud Office still sees prosecuting corruption as a “very big priority,” its head Lisa Osofsky told MLex, despite the dearth in new bribery cases since she took the top job. -
F.H. Bertling’s million-dollar fine for bribery offenses in Angola marks the close of a chapter for the logistics company. But doubts about whether the money can be recouped from the insolvent company, and the dropping of a parallel case, raise questions about how successful prosecutors have been. -
Corrupt public officials engaged in looting state assets are “very litigious” and investigators probing allegations of grand corruption can expect court battles “dealing with the best counsel money can buy,” the head of a global anticorruption investigations network told MLex. -
The recent prosecution of three former Tesco executives collapsed because the Serious Fraud Office didn’t set its evidence bar high enough, a senior agency executive has told MLex in an interview, adding that it must learn lessons from the fiasco. -
The US should join a global effort to make significant ownership of corporations transparent, the UK Prime Minister's Anti-Corruption Champion said, asserting that beneficial ownership registries discourage money laundering and have cost benefits for businesses. -
Accusations that Deutsche Bank did not file suspicious activity reports on certain transactions by Donald Trump and Jared Kushner should be investigated by the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Democratic senators today told FinCEN's director, Kenneth Blanco. -
Companies that engage with US anticorruption authorities in a reliable and cooperative manner starting in the early stages of discussions have better chances of reaching an amenable resolution, an FBI official said today. -
Swiss banks and companies implicated in bribery schemes will be braced for further scrutiny following the widening of probes initiated by the country’s federal prosecutor. -
Better reporting by national oil companies would help improve anti-corruption efforts and other governance issues relating to the companies, said a report based on a new database of 71 state-owned oil firms, which noted these entities have recently been entangled in major corruption scandals. -
Miner BSG Resources now faces a demand for more than $2 billion from Brazil's Vale in damages and costs over corruption claims linked to a massive iron ore deal in Guinea. -
A trader accused of profiting from illicit deal tips regularly spent thousands of pounds at a high-end nightclub with a UBS compliance officer who supplied the information, a London court heard today . -
Fresenius Medical Care hired new compliance professionals at multiple levels of operation, creating a cadre of 350 workers after an investigation by US authorities into bribery in 13 countries began, the dialysis equipment and services firm told MLex. -
A former Barclays trader faces additional jail time after failing to pay thousands of pounds to a London court following his conviction for manipulating a key global benchmark interest rate, MLex has learned. -
ENRC lodges multi-million-pound court claim against SFO -
Hewlett-Packard has accused former executives at Autonomy of “artificially inflating” the software company’s value prior to its sale to HP for $11.1 billion in 2011. -
Punishing corrupt corporate employees is the most effective form of deterrence against bribery and is a key element of the US Justice Department's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement policy, said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. -
An international measurement of corruption that business groups and investors use to make decisions has been improving in recent years, but corruption remains a problem in many countries, a leader of the World Justice Project said at the rollout of the 2019 Rule of Law Index. -
Cartel offenders will have to meet fraud or public-harm criteria to merit prosecution by the Serious Fraud Office, the UK's white-collar crime agency said today in response to a Competition and Markets Authority proposal to transfer over cases involving "hardcore" offenses. -
Banks are increasing their anticorruption due diligence, but the huge volume of transactions flowing through the US financial system makes foreign money-laundering investigations and asset recovery efforts significantly challenging, former Federal Bureau of Investigation agents said.
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Canada's new deferred prosecution agreement regime, a legal change that brought the country in line with the US and UK, has been the center of attention after a report alleging that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pressured an attorney general to grant a deal to bribery-accused engineering firm SNC-Lavalin. -
Eurasian Resources Group's UK unit has filed a US court claim, seeking documents from former British lawmaker Nick Clegg as part of its ongoing negligence dispute with law firm Dechert. -
Multinational trading company Trafigura told Brazilian federal prosecutors it will preserve the e-mails of two former company executives implicated in a bribery scheme with state-controlled oil giant Petrobras, according to a court filing. -
Ten US oil equipment firms were at the center of a bribery scheme the US Treasury Department referenced when it sanctioned Venezuela's national oil company this week. The owners and former employees of those firms are facing sentencing for Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges. -
Lithuanian government officials linked to a bribery-tainted Alstom deal are subject to a corruption probe, Lithuanian prosecutors have told MLex. -
Multinational trading company Trafigura, implicated in a bribery scheme with Brazilian state-controlled oil giant Petrobras, has told Brazilian authorities it can't disclose the contents of emails of two former officials of the company to the courts because doing so could violate European data protection laws, according to court filings. -
The US Justice Department has filed a final motion for forfeiture of $891,730 of bribe proceeds that a Petroleos de Venezuela SA official obtained from two US businessmen in exchange for illicitly promoting their firms in the PDVSA bidding process. -
A familiar refrain from the $1000-an-hour lawyers that firms pay to advise them on how to set up a compliance program is that the program needs to be real — not an on-paper simulation to give the outward appearance of compliance. The Amsterdam-based bank ING got a 775 million euro ($897 million) version of that lesson after Dutch prosecutors levied a money laundering-related penalty and, in a remarkably candid assessment, called out the "serious shortcomings" at the institution. -
A US case involving an international cohort accused of laundering money embezzled from the Venezuelan government through bribery and fraud began when a banker reported extremely suspicious banking activity, court documents said.
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As it enters the second year of an unprecedented anticorruption monitoring program agreed upon with the US Department of Justice and Brazilian Federal Prosecutors’ Office, Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht continues to take action to leave its bribery scandal behind, with its chief compliance officer working to put the company's house in order. -
Walmart is reducing the corruption risk posed by its third-party representatives by reducing the number of them it engages to interact with government officials. Walmart's action highlights the risks that third-party representatives pose to a corporation. -
Sicpa, a Swiss company operating in the authentication of banknotes and traceability markets, is the target of an anticorruption probe in Brazil, MLex has learned. In addition to the administrative investigation, one of its former executives is being tried on criminal charges. Both cases involve the alleged payment of millions of dollars in bribes to secure a contract with the Brazilian Mint.
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The president of KBR’s oil and gas business, Jan Egil Brændeland, was arrested as part of the Serious Fraud Office's investigation into the company, a London court heard today. Details of the arrest emerged during a legal challenge brought by the US oil engineering company, which today claimed the UK’s fraud agency had “cut across” all safeguards designed to protect documents held by companies overseas. -
A former Unaoil executive can't be extradited to the UK to face corruption charges, Monaco has said. A Monaco Court of Appeal official has confirmed to MLex that the state's ruler, Prince Albert II, has rejected a request by the UK's Serious Fraud Office to extradite Saman Ahsani, Unaoil's former commercial director. -
British refurbishment company Skansen Interiors was charged with failure to prevent bribery despite reporting the illegal conduct to UK police, the former chief executive of its parent company told MLex. Ian Pidgen-Bennett warned the decision could send the wrong signal to companies that want to report wrongdoing. -
Handing over small amounts of money to public officials in developing countries simply to help get a job done has nothing to do with bribery, according to many of those who do business in these parts of the world. -
Greek shipping companies Aegean Group and Tsakos Group have been dragged into the Brazilian corruption scandal involving the country's state-controlled oil company, Petróleo Brasileiro, or Petrobras. -
Brazilian authorities have implicated Anglo-Swiss company Glencore in their far-reaching corruption probe related to state-controlled Petróleo Brasileiro, or Petrobras. Court documents seen by MLex show that retail trader and broker of marine fuels Ocean Connect Marine — wholly owned by Glencore — made 121 payments to an offshore company controlled by two Greek citizens who acted as intermediaries in negotiations with Petrobras officials. -
A former World Bank consultant convicted yesterday of receiving corrupt payments from medical companies around the world is at the center of at least five other criminal probes across Europe, MLex has learned.
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Public evidence from the World Bank contradicts claims by Malaysian minister Abdul Rahman Dahlan that China Communications Construction Co, or CCCC, has not been debarred by the multilateral lender, as concerns grow that the Chinese state-owned firm is the prime contractor for Malaysia’s 55 billion ringgit ($12.3 billion) East Coast Rail Link. -
A state-owned Chinese construction company that avoided debarment by the World Bank after paying a $6.9 million success fee to a local “consultant” on a hydropower project in Africa now finds itself in the running for a major hydropower project that the World Bank has supported.