Money Laundering

Peace negotiations risk disruption as top negotiator raided by Ukrainian anti-corruption police, apparently over nuclear energy kickbacks.

The justice and energy ministers of Ukraine resigned on Wednesday, the latest officials to be toppled by a fast-growing corruption scandal involving the energy industry.

A cartel-connected bank, once defended by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, lost its license to operate in Mexico and is in the process of selling off its assets. The move comes just months after the U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned the bank and two other financial institutions for having laundered money for drug cartels and for helping move money to China to pay for fentanyl precursors.

Mexico’s government is rushing to the aid of two Mexican-based banks and a brokerage firm that the U.S. Department of the Treasury accused of working with various cartels to launder money or helping them move money to China to pay for fentanyl precursors. Mexican officials questioned the validity of the Treasury Department’s sanctions, stating that the claims lack sufficient evidence to support the allegations.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has identified and sanctioned two Mexican banks and one brokerage firm over their alleged role in helping multiple cartels launder millions of dollars.

Federal officials have indicted seven foreign nationals in Kentucky, accusing them of moving huge sums of cash for a Mexican drug cartel.

The Kremlin on Wednesday said an unnamed Russian citizen will be freed from U.S. custody as part of the deal to free American teacher Marc Fogel, who returned home after three years in Russian captivity on Wednesday.

Maximiliano Davila-Perez, once the Director of the Bolivian Special Forces for the Fight Against Drug Trafficking (FELCN), has been extradited to the United States where he faces federal charges of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. He is also charged with conspiracy to use and possess automatic weapons in connection with his cocaine importation scheme. The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced Davila-Perez’ extradition from Bolivia on Friday.

A federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida on Wednesday charged Raúl Gorrín, a Venezuelan businessman with close ties to socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, for his involvement in a $1.2-billion money laundering scheme.

President Joe Biden on Thursday hailed the complex prisoner-swap deal with Russia that freed unjustly imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, and two others in exchange for prisoners including Russian assassin Vadim Krasikov as a prodigious “feat of diplomacy.”

Chinese businessman Guo Wengui – also known as Miles Guo and several other names – was convicted on nine out of 12 counts for a billion-dollar fraud scheme by a New York jury on Wednesday.

Federal authorities revealed that members of the Sinaloa Cartel used a network of Chinese underground bankers to launder more than $50 million in drug proceeds.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told China that the Biden administration will “not accept” a flood of cheap industry-destroying exports.

At least two U.S. federal agents working with a group of informants and straw men in Mexico were allegedly able to set up a sophisticated money laundering operation based out of Mexico City’s airport. The operation reportedly ran during the Obama-Biden administration between 2010 and 2019. The two agents apparently have not faced any prosecution and are reportedly still employed by the U.S. government.

The married owners of a Colorado funeral home are facing 260 criminal charges after being accused of abandoning nearly 200 decaying bodies and spending their customers’ money on lavish vehicles and cryptocurrency.

Hunter Biden’s failure to pay his bills was one reason Bergès dropped him as a client, he told the committees.

Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro appointed his alleged top money launderer Alex Saab as the new head of the regime’s investment center.

The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a report on Monday that accused North Korean state-controlled hackers of sharing their shadowy banking and money-laundering networks with scam artists and drug traffickers across Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.

President Joe Biden greenlit the release of Colombian businessman Alex Saab, accused of acting as Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s top money launderer, on Wednesday.

A Texas sheriff’s deputy seized nearly $110,000 in cash during a traffic stop on Interstate 10 — nearly 250 miles from the Mexican border. The deputy reportedly found the cash in body carriers on a Mexican woman traveling with her husband and a juvenile male.

The White House dismissed allegations leveled by James Comer regarding what the chairman termed “$40,000 in laundered China money.”

In Venezuela, the United States dollar has been vilified by the socialist regime time and time again for nearly a quarter of a century, and yet, at the end of the day, the Maduro regime can’t get enough of it.

A California man allegedly took over $830,000 in his mother’s social security payments and veteran benefits for more than 30 years after her death.

A founding member of the 1990s hip-hop group the Fugees was enmeshed in political conspiracies involving millions of dollars in foreign money under two different U.S. presidents, federal prosecutors said as his trial got underway with opening statements.

The European Union is in danger of “criminalising” the use of physical cash with its new anti-money laundering laws, an MEP has warned.

A Texas border judge appears to have set a $5,000 bond on a woman from Mexico who is facing money laundering charges. Authorities stopped the woman from trying to cross to Mexico with $250,000 and two handguns.

Rahul Gandhi, a senior leader of the opposition All India Congress Committee (AICC), on Monday protested against a corruption probe launched by the majority BJP Party that accused Gandhi and his mother of money laundering. The AICC denounced the probe as a “well-planned conspiracy” to destroy BJP’s leading opponents with false charges.

The Royal Thai Police recently rescued 700 Thais from Chinese criminal gang-run compounds in Cambodia, where Thais lured into financial telephone scams are held against their will in debt bondage, Al Jazeera reported Wednesday.

Groups representing over half of all members of the EU Parliament called to classify Switzerland as a high-risk money laundering country.

A federal court in New York sentenced a Gambino crime family captain to prison and ordered him to pay $1 million in restitution for his role in a racketeering conspiracy. The mobster will also pay a fine of $15,000.

A New York couple describing themselves as “serial entrepreneurs” have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and to defraud the U.S. government in relation to a $4.5 billion Bitcoin heist in 2016.

A female Mexican national pleaded guilty to laundering large quantities of cash through U.S. banks in Ohio for one of the most violent drug cartels.

The Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), the rebranded ISIS affiliate wing of Boko Haram, allegedly funnels roughly $43 million through official Nigerian financial institutions annually according to a new report by the Inter-Governmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA).

Italy’s left-populist Five Star Movement (M5S) is under investigation by prosecutors in Milan over allegations of receiving millions of euros of illicit funds from the Venezuelan consul in 2010.