Reported by Naharnet Newsdesk A top U.S. Treasury official visiting Beirut this week pressed Lebanese authorities to prevent funds from being funneled to Hamas by way of Lebanon, officials said. Jesse Baker, deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for Asia and the Middle East in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, met with […]
Reported by Ian Talley The U.S., Israel and more than a dozen allies created a task force on terror financing following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Since then, they have used sanctions to target Hamas financiers, currency exchanges and corporate networks, as well as offering multimillion-dollar bounties for information on financial facilitators. But now, more […]
Reported by David Sheppard, Chris Campbell and Peter Andringa Crashing through car-sized chunks of Arctic sea ice in the face of whirlpool-like currents and near-endless darkness, two specialist heavy transport vessels made a journey few dare to brave: traversing the Northern Sea Route in the depths of winter. Philip Adkins, a former Hollywood banker who was […]
Reported by Sam Rucker Hamas’s international financial web is now “immune fromIsraeli shells”, experts believe – meaning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will struggle to achieve his goal of destroying the militant group. Stephen Reimer, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (Rus) specialising in financial crime, told i that “the total destruction of Hamas” would […]
Reported by Laurence Norman and Georgi Kantchev Two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western sanctions have failed in their most important task—stopping the Kremlin’s war machine. Russia has used shell companies and neighboring countries to buy components used in weapons. And it has obtained a large number of old vessels operating under opaque ownership […]
Reported by MATTHEW KARNITSCHNIG The United Arab Emirates is set to receive a stamp of approval from a global money laundering watchdog, despite concerns of some countries who say the Gulf state has failed to do enough to tackle illicit activity. A written evaluation by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), described to POLITICO, […]
Reported by John O’Donnell and Tom Sims Austria’s financial regulator FMA has been investigating Raiffeisen Bank International over anti-money-laundering failures, the Austrian bank said on Thursday in its annual report. The investigation is focused on the so-called know-your-customer rules, the bank said, referring to a key safety guard to prevent money laundering. It comes as […]
Reported by Chidanand Rajghatta India has put $ 37 billion into Moscow’s coffers with unprecedented purchase of Russian oil at a time it is locked in a war with Ukraine, a European think tank has said, suggesting that New Delhi’s largesse is undermining western sanctions. According to an analysis by the Finland-based Centre for Research […]
Reported by James Hockaday Labour has vowed to “plug the gaps” in existing measures to prevent Russian interference in elections and to tackle the flow of “dirty money” coming into London. Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy said that while the UK has led the way on sanctions against Russia following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he’s worried […]
Reported by Olaf Storbeck Germany’s financial watchdog has threatened to fine Deutsche Bank after the lender failed to fix flaws in its anti-money laundering controls, in the latest setback for chief executive Christian Sewing. Sewing promised to put an end to Deutsche Bank’s long-running legacy of control shortcomings and misconduct scandals after becoming chief executive […]
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