Good morning. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission recently have brought a string of criminal and civil cases accusing individuals and companies of using legitimate-looking websites to deceive financial firms into processing unsavory purchases. Such schemes are often called credit-card laundering or transaction laundering.

Illegal purchases, including drugs, are being processed unwittingly by banks and payments networks including Visa, Mastercard, and American Express, according to court documents and people familiar with the matter. The yearslong boom in e-commerce, even before it got an extra boost during the coronavirus pandemic, has attracted entities looking to use its infrastructure in unintended ways.

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Financial cops are zeroing in on a weak link in the online-payments system: middlemen that connect merchants to the banks that help approve and settle transactions. From low-tech independent sales organizations to Silicon Valley players like PayPal Holdings Inc., Square Inc. and Stripe Inc., an array of companies have sprouted up to help internet businesses take payments.

The companies say they’re committed to fighting misconduct. But the amount of due diligence each performs on merchants varies. Some try to detect any fraud on their platform, and major networks will often provide information to law enforcement to help them catch culprits. Others turn a blind eye or willingly enable it, authorities say.

German prosecutors arrested former Wirecard executives they say colluded to inflate the company’s results by booking fake income as early as 2015, as the scandal spilled further into German politics. The arrests came after government officials said German Chancellor Angela Merkel had promoted Wirecard to Chinese officials in September even though her top aides were aware of probes into possible irregularities at the German company.

The Munich prosecutor’s office said it had rearrested former Chief Executive Markus Braun based on new evidence suggesting that several executives, including former finance chief Burkhard Ley, made up income from third-party providers starting in 2015 to make the company’s loss-making businesses appear profitable.

Under the rule, so-called proxy advisers would have to show their voting recommendations to public companies at the same time or before sending them to clients. They will also have to inform their clients of public companies’ responses to their advice. To allow time for the exchange of information, proxy advisers can require public companies to file their proxy statements at least 40 days before annual shareholder meetings.

• A standards-setting organization for state insurance departments is launching a wide-reaching effort to scour through existing practices—in sales, pricing, underwriting and all other facets of insurance—to identify those that may disadvantage minorities, Ray Farmer, president of the group, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, said in an interview.
   
• Apple is defending how its App Store operates in the face of escalating antitrust scrutiny, touting on Wednesday economic research it commissioned showing that fees it collects from developers are in line with those charged by other digital platforms.
   
• The Justice Department’s antitrust division recently informed ad networks Taboola and Outbrain that it wouldn’t stand in the way of their proposed merger, people familiar with the matter said. A Justice Department spokeswoman said the department had closed its investigation of the merger without taking action but didn’t provide further details.
   
• The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing the U.S.’s first-ever climate standards for commercial airliners and large business jets, aligning U.S. rules with global standards approved by a branch of the United Nations and giving jet makers eight years to comply.
   
• Slack Technologies filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft in the European Union, accusing the software giant of abusing its dominance in allegations that echo the Windows-maker’s competition battles more than a decade ago. The complaint accuses Microsoft of trying to snuff out competition in its push into workplace collaboration tools by tying its Teams software to its widely used Office productivity suite.
   
• OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma has racked up $277 million in professional fees in the first nine months of its bankruptcy—four times as much as it spent on research and development, court records show. The fees include $134 million paid to court-approved bankruptcy lawyers and advisers, such as mediators who have collected $4 million for their efforts to break an impasse holding up a settlement over how much Purdue should pay for its alleged role in the epidemic of opioid addiction.

New York’s top financial regulator filed charges against a subsidiary of insurance company First American Financial Corp. in the first enforcement action by the regulator under a set of rules requiring banks and other financial services companies to maintain cybersecurity protections.

The New York State Department of Financial Services alleged that First American Title Insurance Co., the second-largest real-estate title insurer in the U.S., exposed hundreds of millions of documents containing sensitive information such as Social Security numbers and bank account information over the course of several years.

“First American strongly disagrees with the New York Department of Financial Services’ charges,” the company said in a statement. A spokesman said the company will contest the charges.

Richard Jones spent more than 30 years applying accounting rules as a Big Four accountant. Now he gets to make the rules as the new chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which sets standards for companies and nonprofit entities in the U.S.

The 54-year-old, who began working at FASB in March to ease the transition, took the helm this month amid mounting challenges for companies involving liquidity, expenses and their workforce, due in part to the coronavirus pandemic. The role will push him to weigh the coronavirus-centric needs of businesses and investors, and make tough decisions about prioritizing accounting rule changes.

• A group of Disney members of the Actors’ Equity Association, the New York-based union that represents about 750 Disney World performers, say they want the association to drop its public fight with Disney over coronavirus-safety precautions—a fight they say risks putting them out of a job. Actors’ Equity has publicly called on Disney to test its members for Covid-19 before they return to work, a demand the company has so far refused.
   
• United Airlines said it would trim more flying this quarter in response to stalling demand, while cost-cutting efforts will reduce how much cash it burns moving into the fall. United also said it was expanding its face-coverings requirement to the airports that it serves around the world, effective July 24. And it warned that it could ban those who don’t comply, at least while the mask requirement is in place.

The financial pain for U.S. retailers is worsening beyond what retail executives and analysts anticipated when the coronavirus began to spread, foreshadowing an unrelenting pace of store closures and bankruptcies.

With a resurgence of coronavirus cases across much of the country, some companies that were relatively healthy before the pandemic are showing signs of buckling. Bankruptcies in the sector are piling up, with more retailers seeking chapter 11 protection so far in 2020 than in all of last year.

Many small businesses are shutting down or slashing jobs again as local officials and consumers pull back and the pandemic shows no signs of abating.

Meanwhile, worker applications for unemployment benefits have plateaued at historically high levels after easing for months from a peak early in the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting layoffs remain elevated and the labor market’s recovery is cooling.

Spotify Technology reached a new licensing agreement with Vivendi’s Universal Music Group that secures its massive catalog for streaming and signs the label giant on to Spotify’s “two-sided marketplace”—a strategy executives have talked about since before the company went public two years ago but has met with skepticism as it involves music companies potentially paying for marketing, data and analytics.

Stockholm-based Spotify pays out most of its revenue to recorded-music labels and music publishers and has been under pressure from investors to demonstrate ways it can inch toward consistent profitability.