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The Morning Risk Report: Governments Look to Private Sector in Fight Against Financial Crime
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Mariano Federici at a panel discussion at the 50th Anniversary Federation of Latin American Banks Annual Assembly in Buenos Aires in 2016. PHOTO: SARAH PABST/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Good morning. Private-sector institutions that facilitate the flow of money across the global financial system are often best placed to detect when the system is being abused by criminals. But the sheer volume of data banks collect can make screening for financial crime difficult.
Mariano Federici, the former head of Argentina’s Financial Intelligence Unit, says law enforcement officials must find ways to share information with banks in order to get the best information in return. He spoke with Risk & Compliance Journal’s Dylan Tokar about how governments and the private sector can work together more effectively to fight money laundering and terrorist financing.
[Continued below...]
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“The private sector, particularly the large global financial institutions, have realized that they have a much greater opportunity to add value than what perhaps was originally thought,” says Mr. Federici, who in June joined an investigations and compliance services firm following a stint as head of the Egmont Group, an association of FIUs that works to promote the sharing of financial intelligence among governments. “They have been trying to not just look at their customer, but their broader network.”
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From Risk & Compliance Journal
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Banks Still Expected to Monitor Hemp Growers’ Transactions: FinCEN
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Financial institutions still need to conduct due diligence and monitor transactions for hemp-related businesses, the U.S. Treasury Department’s financial crime unit said, expanding on previous guidance about the industry. Banks need to tailor anti-money-laundering programs to reflect specific risks associated with customers that produce hemp, a variety of the cannabis plant that is often used for its fiber, as they would with any other customer, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said.
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Alexion to Pay More Than $21 Million to Settle Bribery Claims
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Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. agreed to pay more than $21 million to settle claims it bribed government officials to increase prescription drug sales in Turkey and Russia, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said. Alexion subsidiaries in those two countries paid officials to influence patient prescriptions and regulatory approvals of Soliris, a drug used to treat rare blood diseases, an SEC investigation found. The Boston-based company settled the claims without admitting or denying the regulator’s findings.
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Venezuelans collected boxes of food from the nation’s military-run emergency food program, Clap, in Caracas in April. PHOTO: ARIANA CUBILLOS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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An Iranian conglomerate owned by the country’s military and tied to its missile program has established a retail foothold in Venezuela, according to officials and records detailing the move, deepening Tehran’s involvement with the Maduro government. The Iranian firm is working with the Maduro government’s troubled emergency food program, which is the subject of U.S. enforcement action as an alleged money-laundering operation, compounding U.S. concerns regarding the move.
The arrival of the company, which also has ties to Iran’s elite military Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, designated by the U.S. as a terror organization, bolsters Tehran’s foothold in the Western Hemisphere and comes as Venezuela increasingly seeks assistance from U.S. foes, including petroleum from Iran and energy-industry assistance from Russia. The U.S. has imposed sanctions against the governments of the two countries, both of which lauded the new venture as part of a growing diplomatic, military and trade relationship.
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Big tech companies face proposed European regulations aimed at curbing alleged anticompetitive behavior, making them pay more taxes and compelling them to take more responsibility for content on their platforms.
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Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s digital-policy and antitrust czar, detailed for the first time a comprehensive plan of how she aims to rein in U.S. tech giants, using a package of initiatives that the EU has begun to outline individually in recent weeks. The aim is to clearly delineate new legal boundaries for tech companies, rather than just apply existing laws covering fields such as antitrust regulation.
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China’s new security law for Hong Kong targets four political crimes: secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference. But lawyers say its wording is so broad that it is easy to imagine how a business dispute with a Chinese company could end up construed as a breach of the law, putting executives at risk of prosecution.
Meanwhile, U.S. technology titans face a looming test of their free-speech credentials in Hong Kong as China’s new national-security law for the city demands local authorities take measures to supervise and regulate its uncensored internet.
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The next challenge for bringing Boeing’s 737 MAX jets back into service is slated to play out as early as this week, with another government test flight assessing the safety of software fixes.
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Duke Energy and Dominion Energy said they were abandoning the proposed $8 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline, citing continued regulatory delays and uncertainty, even after a favorable Supreme Court ruling last month.
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The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether federal courts can hear claims stemming from atrocities committed overseas, including the exploitation of enslaved children from Mali in cultivating cocoa for multinational food processors.
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A Turkish judge ordered the release of five defendants accused of assisting onetime auto titan Carlos Ghosn in making an undeclared layover in Turkey late last year after he fled Japan inside a musical-equipment box.
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Jan Marsalek, Wirecard’s former chief operating officer, as seen in the company’s 2016 annual report.
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As auditors for Wirecard last month prepared an announcement that they couldn’t confirm the existence of more than $2 billion in cash, colleagues began calling around to locate the company’s 40-year-old chief operating officer, Jan Marsalek, according to people who received inquiries about his whereabouts.
Markus Braun, the chief executive, worked around the clock with the electronic-payments giant’s top executives to chart a response, fast tracking the start date of a new chief compliance officer to reassure investors. But Mr. Marsalek stopped responding to messages, according to the people. Wirecard doesn’t know where Mr. Marsalek is now, according to a spokesperson. He hasn’t been in contact with the company since it suspended his employment on June 18, the day Wirecard revealed the $2 billion hole in its balance sheet. Remaining executives believe he has gone on the run, according to people familiar with the matter.
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An accounting investigation at Luckin Coffee concluded that the company’s chairman knew—or should have known—about fabricated transactions that inflated sales, according to a person familiar with the matter.
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A report detailing the internal probe also said that Charles Lu, Luckin’s co-founder and chairman, didn’t fully cooperate with the investigation, the person said. Mr. Lu remains chairman of Luckin after the board failed to get the necessary votes to oust him.
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Commerzbank said its chief executive and chairman submitted their resignations, as the bank faces pressure from shareholder Cerberus Capital Management for a deep overhaul due to persistent poor performance.
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Facebook leaders including Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg are set to meet this week with civil rights groups that called for an advertising boycott against the company over its handling of hate speech and misinformation.
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Healthcare workers moved a patient in the Covid-19 unit of a hospital in Houston, Texas, on Thursday. PHOTO: MARK FELIX/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Top officials in southern and western U.S. cities and states with growing coronavirus cases sounded the alarm Sunday, saying hospitals were near capacity and that stricter social-distancing enforcement was needed to stem the growing outbreaks. Meanwhile, states that stemmed the spread of cases in recent weeks face the challenge of maintaining that success.
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Chapter 11 business bankruptcy filings increased 26% in the first half of this year as more companies sought protection from creditors during the coronavirus pandemic, according to legal-services firm Epiq Systems Inc. Meanwhile, restaurants that survived the coronavirus hit in March and April are reeling from a second punch that could put more eateries out of business.
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Mexico’s true death toll from coronavirus is nearly double the government’s official count, according to a review of data from a Mexican government agency that suggests the country now has more than 50,000 coronavirus deaths.
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Economic activity is gathering momentum in China, a raft of survey data indicates, the latest sign that Beijing’s uncompromising approach to tackling the coronavirus pandemic is starting to pay dividends even as the U.S. shuts down swaths of its economy in a struggle to contain the virus. But fallout from the pandemic has cast doubt on whether China can meet its targets to buy U.S. goods under this year’s trade deal—with energy emerging as the biggest casualty.
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India intends its ban on Chinese apps to show its willingness to dismantle important economic links between the two countries to pressure Beijing to back off in a border dispute, Indian officials and analysts say. But further steps to roll back economic integration would be at least as painful for India as China. TikTok, one of the banned apps, meanwhile, has sought to distance itself from Beijing.
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Workers produced components for braking systems while maintaining a distance of at least 1 meter.
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Factories in the U.S. and around the world are facing the challenge of how to reopen safely following the coronavirus pandemic. After weeks of lockdown and social distancing, bringing back thousands of employees to work together in proximity could cause new clusters of infection, setting back the economic recovery and forcing some companies to extend costly closures.
China, which began restarting its manufacturing plants over four months ago after Covid-19 forced a nationwide shutdown, provides a template for how this can be done safely. It also offers reassurance that, with a few tweaks to working procedures, many factories can swiftly resume normal production.
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Companies are facing added difficulty staying connected to work-from-home employees in remote areas, where internet services can be slow and at times patchy, technology executives and analysts say.
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After years of effort to secure talent in a tight labor market, many finance chiefs responding to the shock of the coronavirus pandemic have so far preferred to furlough workers instead of severing ties completely, even if it means spending a little more.
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A view of FedEx Field in Landover, Md., home of the NFL’s Washington Redskins. PHOTO: MARK GOLDMAN/ICON SMI/ZUMA PRESS
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Washington’s National Football League franchise is undertaking a “thorough review” of their team name—the Redskins—amid pressure from fans and sponsors that they should abandon the moniker commonly seen as a racial slur. The announcement came a day after FedEx—the team’s most prominent sponsor as the name sponsor of FedExField, where Washington plays—said it asked the team to change its name. Fred Smith, the shipping giant’s founder and CEO, is a minority owner of the team.
Nike, the NFL’s apparel partner, meanwhile, removed the team’s apparel from its online shop. That placed one of the NFL’s most prominent partners at odds with one of its franchises in a decision with potentially weighty financial ramifications.
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