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The Morning Risk Report: U.S. Solicits Feedback on Anti-Money-Laundering Rules for Antiquities Dealers
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The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said a range of factors make the antiquities market prone to money laundering. PHOTO: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Good morning. The U.S. Treasury Department has begun the process of extending anti-money-laundering requirements to antiquities dealers, part of an effort to plug a longstanding hole in U.S. laws that guard against financial crimes.
The department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, issued a notice on Thursday asking the public for feedback about the prospective rules, which were mandated by Congress as part of an anti-money-laundering reform law passed in January.
[Continued below…]
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The legislation approved by Congress directs FinCEN to extend requirements created by the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 to the antiquities market. That law requires financial institutions to take steps to develop and test anti-money-laundering compliance programs, train staff, and designate a compliance officer to oversee adherence to the law.
Experts and lawmakers have long singled out the largely unregulated art and antiquities markets as two areas they say are ripe for exploitation by organized criminals and terrorist groups.
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WSJ Risk & Compliance Forum
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Join us on Oct. 12 for the WSJ Risk & Compliance Forum. The virtual program includes sessions on anti-money laundering laws, emerging risks, compliance and cryptocurrencies, lessons from Wirecard and workshops on ESG reporting and responding to ransomware. Register here.
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A former analyst at OppenheimerFunds is accused of running an insider-trading operation using his wife’s personal brokerage account; the federal courthouse for the Southern District of New York. PHOTO: MICHAEL NAGLE/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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A former quantitative analyst for a global asset manager was charged with securities and wire fraud for allegedly using nonpublic information to commit insider trading that netted him more than $8.5 million in profit, according to a complaint unsealed Thursday in federal court. The analyst, Sergei Polevikov, who worked at OppenheimerFunds Inc., is accused of operating a front-running scheme in which he would use his wife’s personal brokerage account to buy or sell stock in advance of large pending purchase or sale orders by his employer on behalf of its clients.
The alleged scheme took advantage of small price movements that generally happened during and following the firm’s purchases, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Manhattan.
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The legislation is the first to target a central facet of working at an Amazon warehouse, where the company has long used performance quotas to gauge worker productivity as it has gradually sped up shipping times. Gov. Newsom, a Democrat, signed the bill about two weeks after it was approved by state lawmakers.
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Federal energy regulators recommended more stringent cold-weather standards for power plants and natural-gas supply networks after investigating the blackouts that crippled Texas during a freeze in February.
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Some 20 million of Myanmar’s 53 million people had Facebook accounts in 2018, according to a company-commissioned report. PHOTO: SAI AUNG MAIN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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A federal judge ordered Facebook to hand over records related to accounts it shut down in 2018 that were linked to government-backed violence against the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar, as the social-media giant grapples with the effects content on its platform has in the real world.
The ruling, by a magistrate judge in Washington, criticized Facebook for refusing to provide the records to countries pursuing a case against Myanmar in international court, saying allowing it to withhold them “would compound the tragedy that has befallen the Rohingya.” Facebook had resisted the request for information related to the closed accounts, arguing that providing such documents in response to a civil subpoena would violate U.S. privacy law.
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Amazon and other big technology companies have generally rejected claims that they exercise too much market power. PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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American voters have deep-seated concerns about the power wielded by big technology companies and want the federal government to take a stronger stand in regulating them, according to a new poll.
The poll conducted for the privately funded Future of Tech Commission found that 80% of registered voters—83% of Democrats and 78% of Republicans—agreed the federal government “needs to do everything it can to curb the influence of big tech companies that have grown too powerful and now use our data to reach too far into our lives.”
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Last year as China Evergrande Group’s stock and bond prices seesawed, it offered deep discounts to keep sales growing during the pandemic and the government effectively said it had borrowed too much. Yet the developer’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers in Hong Kong, gave it a clean bill of health in an annual report issued this spring.
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U.S. and European companies operating in China are feeling the effects as the country turns inward by keeping its borders closed and showing favoritism toward domestic companies, two business lobbies said in separate reports. One of the reports—an annual survey released by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai—showed that 45% of 338 members surveyed said China’s strict rules related to entering the country had a negative impact on their operations.
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Investors are ramping up wagers that a global push to lower carbon emissions will hamper commodity production, pushing up prices for everything from natural gas to aluminum.
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A top ABC staffer said Disney executive Peter Rice decided not to conduct an external investigation of how the company handled misconduct claims against a former producer. PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Walt Disney Co. isn’t pursuing an independent investigation into how the network handled sexual-assault allegations against the former top producer of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the show’s executive producer told staffers earlier this week. Simone Swink, the executive producer of “GMA,” said during a staff meeting on Monday that an outside probe into the departure of Michael Corn as senior executive producer of the top-rated morning news program “is not happening at this time,” according to a recording of the meeting.
ABC News President Kim Godwin told staff last month that she requested an independent probe into the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported. The decision not to move forward with an investigation was disclosed to Ms. Godwin, Ms. Swink and other top ABC staffers in a meeting last Friday held by Peter Rice, who in his role as Disney’s chairman of general entertainment content oversees the news unit, according to the recording.
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A Volkswagen assembly line in Wolfsburg, Germany, where business activity in the country has slowed to a seven-month low. PHOTO: SWEN PFOERTNER/PRESS POOL
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The U.S. and European economies slowed in September as supply-chain bottlenecks and worries over the Delta variant weighed on businesses, adding to signs the global economy is experiencing a soft patch amid an uneven recovery, purchasing managers’ surveys showed. Manufacturing and services businesses in both the U.S. and Eurozone reported slower growth in activity this month, although the pullback was more pronounced in Europe.
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