Money Laundering

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has identified two cartel-connected groups in the border state of Tamaulipas, as well as three of their main operators. As part of the move, the U.S. government is freezing any related accounts and prohibiting U.S. citizens from doing business with the sanctioned individuals.

Mexican military forces clashed with several gunmen from the Sinaloa Cartel, killing 11 of them. The shootout came as a result of a series of raids in a luxurious suburb of Culiacan, where forces arrested the daughter of jailed cartel kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. Hours later, Mexican authorities released the woman despite U.S. authorities having identified her in the past as a money laundering operator for the cartel.

Two Mexican federal judges are facing suspension and were forcibly removed from their offices. The judges are the target of an internal judicial investigation for a series of rulings that protected a fugitive former Mexican governor from extradition, who is currently wanted on money laundering charges in Texas.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has announced a series of sanctions against a resort in Mexico tied to timeshare scams run by the terrorist organization Cartel Jalisco New Generation. In response to the move by U.S. financial authorities, Mexico’s government has also frozen assets and imposed sanctions on the same resort and its operators.

A leader in an agency linked to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will plead guilty to accepting bribes.

Zelenskyy had dismissed his previous chief of staff after anti-corruption officials began investigating alleged graft in the energy sector.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced an enforcement operation along the southwest border targeting more than 100 money service businesses (MSBs). The effort is the latest operation aimed at cutting off financial tools used by drug cartels.

Paul Campo, who previously served as a high-ranking Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official in the Obama administration, is accused, along with a friend of his, of agreeing to launder millions for the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) — of Mexico’s largest drug cartels.

President Zelensky said he was acting to get ahead of “rumours and speculation” as he dismissed his chief of staff and lead peace negotiator.

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

The U.S. Treasury Department has moved against a group of Albanian mobsters based in Mexico that worked with the Sinaloa Cartel to launder money through casinos and entertainment businesses. The move was coordinated with Mexican authorities, who began shutting down 13 casinos this week that had been transferring money to Romania, Switzerland, Malta, and the United Arab Emirates.

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.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury is stepping up its efforts to identify the ways that drug cartels move their funds. Most recently, Treasury officials identified the presence of Chinese money laundering networks that are working with Mexican drug cartels and other criminal entities to move large sums of cash.

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 Biden administration covered up “hundreds” of suspicious activity reports (SAR) for the Democrat Party’s fundraising machine, ActBlue, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) alleged this week as his Oversight Committee investigates the platform for potential fraud.

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.