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The Morning Risk Report: Drug Crime Expert Charged With Laundering Venezuelan Bribery Proceeds
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The Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, which hears cases from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, where an indictment was filed Monday charging Bruce Bagley with money laundering. PHOTO: DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES
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Good morning. A University of Miami professor who has written on organized crime was charged Monday with laundering money from a bribery scheme in Venezuela.
Bruce Bagley, 73 years old and an often cited expert on crime in Latin America, laundered $3 million in profits from foreign bribery and embezzlement schemes connected to public works projects in Venezuela, according to prosecutors.
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Mr. Bagley, author of the book, “Drug Trafficking, Organized Crime, and Violence in the Americas Today,” was quoted widely in the media, including The Wall Street Journal, in articles about drug cartels and violence in Latin America. He didn’t return requests for comment on Monday. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan said Mr. Bagley had been arrested and released on bail.
The money laundering was done through a Weston, Fla., bank though an account Mr. Bagley set up in the name of a company he owned, according to prosecutors, who added that the scheme followed a set pattern.
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U.S. Sees Uptick In Suspicious Cryptocurrency Transactions
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The U.S. Treasury Department says it has seen an increase in suspicious-transaction reports related to potential virtual currency scams.
The Treasury has received more than 10,000 suspicious-transaction reports involving virtual currencies since putting financial institutions on notice in May that traditional anti-money-laundering laws applied to such transactions, Kenneth Blanco, director of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, said Friday.
The Financial Action Task Force, an international organization created by the Group of Seven countries, recently adopted standards requiring cryptocurrency exchanges and financial institutions to share information about their customers when completing digital currency transactions.
Mr. Blanco said the so-called travel rule applied to virtual currencies. “We expect you to comply, period,” he told attendees at a blockchain symposium in New York.
—Dylan Tokar
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The Treasury Department said four companies based in Turkey were providing financial and logistical support for Islamic State. PHOTO: PATRICK SEMANSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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The U.S. blacklisted four companies based in Turkey that the Treasury Department said were providing financial and logistical support for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
The alleged activities of the companies operating in Turkey, including two currency-exchange houses, underscore the concerns among Western intelligence and security experts that Ankara hasn’t done enough to counter Islamic State and other terror organizations operating within its borders.
The move follows the death last month of the ideological leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a U.S.-led raid as well as the president’s decision to pull U.S. forces out of northern Syria—a decision critics said risked empowering the internationally designated terror group.
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Pope Francis unexpectedly replaced the Vatican’s top financial regulator amid a brewing financial scandal over the Holy See’s investments in London real estate. The Vatican said that René Brülhart’s mandate as president of its Financial Information Authority, or AIF, had ended but didn’t say why the pope had decided not to renew it.
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The Federal Trade Commission is pursuing several antitrust investigations into online platforms, the agency said, suggesting a broader review of the technology sector than previously known. FTC Chairman Joseph Simons said that in addition to the agency’s probe of Facebook, which that company has disclosed, the agency has “multiple other investigations going on with major platforms.”
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President Trump delayed a decision to impose curbs on e-cigarettes that he had been considering, following pushback from the industry and users, according to an administration official. The decision drew a harsh response from some members of Congress, who say it appears the White House is doing an about-face.
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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said he will push for a public auction of airwaves ideally suited for new fifth-generation wireless networks, choosing a plan that could steer more cash to the federal government over some satellite operators’ objections.
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The Justice Department is moving to terminate legal rules that have governed the movie industry since the late 1940s, a step that could shake up how movies are distributed and the terms on which they hit the big screen. The department’s antitrust division has concluded that the rules have outlived their usefulness in a world where the movie business has changed considerably.
Also...
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Huawei hardware makes up less than 1% of equipment used by U.S. telecom networks, but some of its gear is used by rural carriers. PHOTO: MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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The Trump administration extended a license allowing rural telecom providers to continue working with Chinese equipment maker Huawei Technologies despite national-security-related restrictions imposed six months ago.
The Commerce Department has added 90 days to the duration of a license maintaining business as usual between Huawei and rural telecommunications providers that have purchased and installed its equipment. Huawei has been largely cut off from working with U.S. companies after it was added to an export blacklist earlier this year.
The extension of the license, which was set to expire on Monday, prevents escalating new restrictions on Huawei’s business during a key period for U.S.-China negotiators who are trying to work out a trade deal between the world’s two largest economies.
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Gerhard Richter's 1968 streetscape ‘Cathedral Square, Milan’ is displayed at Sotheby's auction house before a May 2013 auction. PHOTO: ANTHONY DEVLIN/PA IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES
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The art world is getting a crash course in leverage, and worries are growing that cases like Donald Bryant’s could prove a tipping point for banks and borrowers alike amid an increasingly skittish market. Monthly interest payments: $300,000.
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Slowing shale-drilling activity is the latest damper on U.S. manufacturers that had come to rely on a booming domestic energy market.
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There is no end in sight for Hong Kong’s political crisis, but the city will likely remain a magnet for Chinese companies looking to raise cash.
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Global flows of goods across borders are on course to grow at the weakest pace since the financial crisis, according to the World Trade Organization, as trade tensions and rising tariffs continue to weigh on exports and imports.
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The pace of deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon has accelerated during the past year, the country’s space agency said, with activists blaming the government of President Jair Bolsonaro for its promotion of economic development in the vast rainforest region.
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Chick-fil-A will focus on a narrower list of philanthropic priorities. PHOTO: RASHID ABBASI/REUTERS
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Chick-fil-A said it would limit its focus on charitable giving starting next year to education, homelessness and hunger, following controversy over donations to groups whose positions some customers and critics perceive as antigay.
Liberal groups and some customers have criticized past statements by Chief Executive Dan Cathy and donations by Chick-fil-A’s charitable foundation that they said were discriminatory to gay people. Mr. Cathy said in 2012 that supporting same-sex marriage was “inviting God’s judgment.”
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TikTok this year made history as China’s first social-media company to make it big in the U.S. Now, TikTok wants to shed its label as a Chinese brand. As TikTok faces mounting scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers and regulators, some employees and advisers in recent weeks have approached senior executives to suggest ways the company could rebrand, according to people familiar with the discussions. Ideas discussed include expanding operations in Southeast Asia, possibly Singapore—which would allow executives to distance the video-sharing app from China—and rebranding it in the U.S., the people said.
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Yoann Perrotin, reading with 2-year-old son, in the bedroom they share in their small rented apartment. He worked a temporary bank job and is now on unemployment. PHOTO: MARK HENLEY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Unemployment in Europe is at its lowest level in a generation. Ten million more people have jobs today than before the financial crisis a decade ago. Demand for workers remains high, with more job openings than ever before across the European Union.
Yet behind the numbers is a shift that is changing Europe. A growing proportion of new jobs are part-time, temporary or self-employed positions that lack the benefits that European workers have long expected. By last year, 14.2% of European jobs were temporary, compared with just 4% in the U.S.—leaving many workers without insurance, a pension or disability benefits.
The result is a surge in the ranks of Europeans who have jobs and still struggle to make ends meet, while watching the lives of many others improve.
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Operating chief Mike Sievert will become CEO of T-Mobile US in May. PHOTO: STEPHEN BRASHEAR/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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T-Mobile US Inc. said Chief Executive John Legere will step down this spring, handing the top job to operating chief Mike Sievert.
Mr. Sievert, 50 years old, will become chief executive on May 1, taking over after Mr. Legere’s current employment contract expires. The company said Mr. Legere will remain a director.
T-Mobile faces a litany of challenges before then, including an antitrust lawsuit brought by a coalition of state attorneys general against T-Mobile’s planned $26 billion-plus takeover of Sprint. A trial is scheduled to start Dec. 9 in New York.
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