Reported by Erin Griffith After Manish Lachwani founded the Silicon Valley software start-up HeadSpin in 2015, he inflated the company’s revenue numbers by nearly fourfold and falsely claimed that firms including Apple and American Express were customers. He showed a profit where there were losses. He used HeadSpin’s cash to make risky trades on tech stocks. And […]
Reported by KATE KNIBBS This was a year for unwieldy, searching, big-swing books. Doorstoppers and sagas rose to the moment, providing insight into an increasingly inscrutable world even when they couldn’t provide comfort. As always, this is an idiosyncratic, incomplete, and subjective list, the result of one person’s avid but disorganized reading schedule. But these […]
Reported by Alan Rappeport The United States and Europe have imposed strict sanctions on Russia over the past two years. But an illicit network of traders and smugglers, working with the assistance of shadowy financial firms, has been helping Russia gain access to banned products that it needs to restock its military arsenal. Treasury Secretary Janet L. […]
Reported by Lockridge Okoth Amid ongoing spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) race, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been engaging with the institutional players in the race for approvals. By and large, the plain message has reportedly been that the ETFs do cash creates or wait, according to ETF specialist with Bloomberg Intelligence, […]
Reported by Tariq Tahir An accountant alleged to have acted as right-hand man to accused Hezbollah financier Nazem Ahmad has been extradited to the US. Sundar Nagarajan, 56, was arrested in London at the behest of the American authorities this year on suspicion of fraud and money-laundering offences. The Indian citizen was detained by the Met Police’s National Extradition […]
Reported by Sam Jones Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International has concluded a complex asset swap arrangement with Oleg Deripaska that skirts EU sanctions restrictions to hand the Russian oligarch roubles worth €1.5bn. In a statement on Tuesday, RBI said its Russian subsidiary would make the cash payment to Deripaska in exchange for his 28 per cent […]
Reported by Reuters A long-awaited U.S. rule aimed at curbing money laundering in real estate has reached a key White House office for review, the final hurdle for it to clear before it can be formally proposed next year. The rule, put forth by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), reached the Office […]
Reported by Paul Mozur, Aaron Krolik and Adam Satariano Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, engineers at Convex, a Russian telecommunications company, needed to find American equipment to transmit data to the country’s feared intelligence service. But no gear was flowing in after Western nations imposed sweeping new trade limits on Russia. Convex’s employees soon found a solution. […]
Reported by Peter I. Altman, Michael A. Asaro, James Joseph Benjamin Jr., Brian T. Daly, Anne M. Evans, Katherine R. Goldstein, Claudius B. Modesti, Parvin Daphne Moyne, Douglas A. Rappaport, and Lillian Jordan Rand While it took a few decades to surface, the fact pattern set forth in the movie “Trading Places” has finally come […]
Reported by Paul J. Davies The fight against money laundering, terror finance and tax dodging has made big demands on banks for years – and regulators have punished them harshly when they’ve come up short. However, a host of other professionals that help hide the world’s dirty money have mostly been left untouched. Chief among […]
Financial Crime News Briefs 