#money-laundering

#money-laundering

Nusrat Choudhury was confirmed Thursday as a federal judge by the US Senate, making history as the first Muslim woman and the first Bangladeshi American to join the federal judicial bench.The vote in the Democrat-led Senate narrowly passed along party lines.President Joe Biden nominated the civil rights attorney in January 2022, along with seven other federal judicial nominees, who, the White House said, continue to fulfill the President's promise to ensure that the nation's court reflects the diversity that is one of our greatest assets as a court both in terms of personal and professional backgrounds.

Atlanta's city council voted early Tuesday morning to provide public funding for a controversial law enforcement training facility, cementing an unusual alliance that has formed between local Democrats and state Republicans.With the Democratic mayor, left-leaning city council and state Republicans all backing millions of dollars in taxpayer funds for the private non-profit that is building the center, the facility dubbed Cop City by opponents is set to take the next step towards construction, local political observers say.

Hundreds arrived to speak before the Atlanta City Council before a vote to approve funding for the Cop City on Monday.Activists participate in a protest against the proposed Cop City being built in an Atlanta forest on March 09, 2023 in New York City.Spencer Platt / Getty Images A prominent civil rights group is calling for a federal investigation into Georgia police's arrest of three lead organizers for the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a bail fund that has helped in protesters' fight against Cop City, raising deep concerns about the state's seeming quest to paint protesters against Cop City as "terrorists."

"There is no first amendment in Atlanta," wrote activist Micah Herskind.Activists participate in a protest against the proposed Cop City being built in an Atlanta forest on March 9, 2023, in New York City.Spencer Platt / Getty Images Law enforcement officers in Georgia have arrested three top organizers behind a bail fund in Atlanta that has been aiding protesters against Cop City.

Federal prosecutors are scrutinizing at least 10 political nonprofit groups including five recently profiled in The New York Times seeking to determine if the groups defrauded donors, according to two recent subpoenas.The subpoenas, both signed by the same Manhattan-based federal prosecutor, sought recordings of the fund-raising calls made by two separate networks of political nonprofits that together have raised tens of millions of dollars.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has made no move to penalize or marginalize Representative George Santos even in the face of mounting allegations of misconduct and lies by the first-term New York Republican, has signaled that Mr. Santos will be allowed to continue to serve in Congress even after being indicted on federal charges.

Charges against Santos include money laundering, wire fraud, theft of public funds and lying to Congress.Rep. George Santos claps during an address by South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol in a joint meeting of Congress in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol on April 27, 2023, in Washington, D.C.Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images Republican Rep. George Santos of New York, whose brief tenure in Congress has been dominated by scandal, was arrested by federal authorities Wednesday on a slew of criminal charges including money laundering, wire fraud, theft of public funds, and lying to Congress.

The UK government should back the establishment of an international anti-corruption court to prosecute corrupt leaders of countries unwilling or unable to enforce their own anti-kleptocracy laws, according to Lord Hain, the former Foreign Office minister.With cross-party support, Hain will propose that the time has come for Britain to throw its weight behind the growing global momentum for an international court, analogous to the international criminal court in The Hague.

UBS said Monday that it has completed its takeover of embattled rival Credit Suisse, nearly three months after the Swiss government hastily arranged a rescue deal to combine the country's two largest banks in a bid to safeguard Switzerland's reputation as a global financial center and choke off market turmoil.

Police arrested suspects and raided homes early Wednesday across Germany and Italy in a massive effort to clamp down on members of the Italian 'ndrangheta organized crime syndicate.In Germany, more than 1,000 officers searched dozens of homes, offices and stores in the states of Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Thuringia, prosecutors said in a joint statement.

An illegal streaming gang who offered cut-price subscriptions for Premier League matches to more than 50,000 people have been jailed.The Premier League said five men were convicted of conspiracy to defraud, money laundering and contempt of court after generating more than 7 million in five years.Mark Gould, from London, was reported to have masterminded the operation and was handed an 11-year prison sentence at Chesterfield Crown Court on Tuesday.

Supporters of former prime minister Imran Khan clash with security forces in Lahore, Pakistan, May 10, 2023.(Rahat Dar/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) Comment Gift Article ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan's political crisis threatened to spiral out of control on Wednesday, a day after the arrest of opposition leader and former prime minister Imran Khan, as two provinces requested military support against protesters amid reports of several deaths.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has issued his first detailed legal defense since prosecutors accused him of fraud, seeking to dismiss several of the charges and claiming that the high-powered law firm representing FTX in its bankruptcy has been doing the government's bidding.

Republican Rep. George Santos of New York, who was indicted on charges of wire fraud and money laundering, has lost his effort to keep the public from learning the names of the people who co-signed his $500,000 bond, according to court records.Santos' attorney Joseph Murray had asked the court to keep the names of the people who guaranteed his half-a-million dollar bond sealed after a motion was filed by multiple news organizations, including CNN, requesting the names be made public.

Indicted Rep. George Santos' attorney has filed a letter asking the judge overseeing the New York Republican's case to keep the names of the people who put up his $500,000 bond sealed.Attorney Joseph Murray objected to a motion by news organizations, including CNN, for the judge to make public the names of the cosigners following Santos' indictment on campaign finance and fraud charges in New York in early May.

The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed 13 federal charges against Rep. George Santos and the New York Republican is in custody, a spokesperson for the Eastern District of New York said.Santos has been charged on seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds and two counts of making materially false statements to the US House of Representatives.

The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed 13 federal charges against Rep. George Santos including fraud related to Covid-related unemployment benefits and using campaign funds for luxury clothing and the New York Republican is in custody.Santos has been charged on seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.

The Atlanta city council early on Tuesday approved funding for the construction of a proposed police and firefighter training center, rejecting the pleas of hundreds of activists who spoke for hours in fierce opposition to the project they decry as Cop City.Some Cop City opponents have faced unprecedented arrests during which police have accused them under a state domestic terrorism statute, prompting a legal challenge which argues that the protesters are being unduly targeted over their constitutionally protected free speech.

A Florida art dealer who promised bargains on works he claimed were originals by master artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring and Henri Matisse has been sentenced to more than two years in federal prison for running a counterfeit scheme, federal officials said.The man, Daniel Elie Bouaziz, 69, owned several art galleries in Palm Beach County, Fla., through which he operated the counterfeit scheme.

The head of the government's ethics advisory body has called for an overhaul of the rules on political donations, warning stronger safeguards are required against the influence of foreign money.Lord Jonathan Evans, chair of the independent committee on standards in public life, told the Observer that the government needed to implement new measures which would establish the true source of donations and improve diligence checks.

Ministers have published the list of 600 EU laws the government plans to scrap by the end of the year in a much-reduced Brussels bonfire that has enraged hardline Brexiters in the Conservative party.In a significant retreat on its retained EU law bill, the government has slashed the number of environmental laws that would have automatically expired on 31 December from 1,700 to 341.

Iran freed a Belgian aid worker imprisoned in Tehran for 455 days on charges of spying, in exchange for Belgium releasing a former Iranian diplomat who was convicted in 2021 of a thwarted bomb plot.The aid worker, Olivier Vandecasteele, was flown late Thursday from Tehran to Muscat, the capital of Oman, where the exchange took place, Belgium's prime minister, Alexander De Croo, said on Friday.

If diplomats were on TikTok, de-risk would be trending.The word has suddenly become popular among officials trying to loosen China's grip on global supply chains but not cut ties entirely, with the joint communique from this weekend's Group of 7 meeting making clear that the world's largest democratic economies will now focus on de-risking, not decoupling.

Former Kane County Circuit Clerk Thomas Hartwell, indicted last month on charges of misusing public money and receiving kickbacks, was found dead Wednesday morning in an apparent suicide, officials said.Hartwell, 63, was found at his Palatine law firm office by police conducting a well-being check, the Kane County State's Attorney's Office said.

The European Union has given final approval to the first set of rules in the world designed to broadly regulate the cryptocurrency market.The Markets in Cryptoassets (MiCA) regulation, expected to come into force next year, places a number of rules on firms dealing in digital currencies, including that any organization planning to issue, trade or store crypto assets (ie, digital wallets) be licensed to do such business in the 27-nation bloc.

Consumer cryptocurrency trading should be regulated as gambling, the Treasury Committee has urged.In a new report, the committee called for consumer trading in unbacked cryptoassets to be treated in regulation as gambling.The cross-party committee of MPs said cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are being used by criminals in scams and money laundering.

Today, the European Union approved a comprehensive set of cryptocurrency regulations seeking to lay the groundwork for how crypto is regulated globally.The rules-which make providers liable if they lose investors' crypto assets-will go into effect in 2024 across 27 EU member states."I am very pleased that today we are delivering on our promise to start regulating the crypto-assets sector," Elisabeth Svantesson, Sweden's minister of finance, said in a press release.

The U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) head of crypto enforcement has promised a crackdown on illicit behaviour on trading platforms, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Monday.Eun Young Choi, director of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET), said the DOJ is targeting crypto exchanges that allow "criminal actors to easily profit from their crimes and cash out," as a means of fighting crypto crime which she said has grown "significantly" in the last four years.

The day after Representative George Santos was charged with wire fraud and money laundering as part of a 13-count federal indictment, he was free to go back to work as a freshman Republican congressman from Long Island.Mr. Santos, who pleaded not guilty, can still vote in the House, and he can still raise money to run for re-election.

A European judicial team questioned Lebanon's caretaker finance minister on Friday in an investigation related to corruption probes of the country's Central Bank governor, officials said.The questioning is part of a probe by a delegation from France, Germany, and Luxembourg, now on its third visit to Lebanon to interrogate suspects and witnesses in the case.

A European judicial team questioned on Thursday the brother of Lebanon's embattled Central Bank governor who is is being investigated abroad over several financial crimes and the laundering of some $330 million.The questioning is part of a probe by a delegation from France, Germany, and Luxembourg, which is now on its third visit to Lebanon to interrogate suspects and witnesses in the case.

German police have made several arrests as part of a "wide-scale" operation against the Italian 'Ndrangheta mafia in several European countries, German judicial authorities said Wednesday.Published: 3 May 2023 09:33 CEST Around 100 German officers carried out raids in five parts of the country, regional prosecutors said in a statement, adding that operations also took place in Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

German police have made several arrests as part of a "wide-scale" operation against the Italian 'Ndrangheta mafia in several European countries, German judicial authorities said Wednesday.Published: 3 May 2023 09:33 CEST A police officer during a raid in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia early Wednesday morning.