Good morning. Colombian financial holding company Grupo Aval and its banking subsidiary have agreed to pay more than $80 million in fines to resolve investigations into a scheme to bribe Colombian government officials to win a highway construction contract.

At federal court in Baltimore, representatives for Grupo Aval and its subsidiary Corporación Financiera Colombiana, also known as Corficolombiana, entered into an agreement with U.S. prosecutors on Thursday to settle violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The two firms also settled related civil claims in an administrative proceeding with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

• Aval's response: In a statement to investors on Thursday, Grupo Aval said it took responsibility for its actions.“Corficolombiana and Grupo Aval consider this painful chapter closed, insisting on their commitment to the highest ethical standards and the continuous strengthening of their control environment,” the group said.
   
• Ongoing fallout: Thursday’s announcement is the latest development in the widespread corruption investigations tied to the operations of Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, which in 2016 admitted to bribing officials in several Latin American countries to secure lucrative infrastructure contracts.

Supreme Court blocks Purdue Pharma’s $6 billion Sackler opioid settlement.

The Supreme Court blocked Purdue Pharma’s $6 billion settlement of opioid lawsuits against its Sackler family owners, agreeing to hear the Justice Department’s claim that the drugmaker’s bankruptcy plan improperly wipes out potential liability to additional parties for allegedly fueling the addiction crisis.

DOJ's view. The Justice Department has taken the position that the Sacklers, as owners of Purdue, can’t use its bankruptcy case to receive a release of all opioid-related claims against them. Bankruptcy courts have no authority to force creditors to sign away their legal rights if they don’t like the settlement terms being offered in chapter 11, according to the department’s bankruptcy watchdog, the Office of the U.S. Trustee.

China’s economy isn’t ailing—it’s ‘evolving’: IPO lawyers told to watch their language.

Regulators in China have become uncomfortable with how some companies are describing the country’s risks to international investors.

Last month officials from the country’s securities regulator told a group of domestic law firms to soften the wording of China-specific risk disclosures in overseas stock-listing documents, according to people familiar with the meeting. The officials suggested alternative descriptions of certain risks and said some should be dropped entirely.

• Crypto trading platform Bittrex agreed to pay $24 million to settle charges that it operated an illegal securities exchange, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday.
   
• China lifted restrictions on group tours to the U.S., Australia, South Korea and Japan on Thursday, a move that is set to boost global tourism after three years of pandemic restrictions.
   
• President Biden’s executive order restricting investments by U.S. firms in some Chinese technology sectors over national security concerns threatens to cause problems for investors with existing deals in China.

AI is generating security risks faster than companies can keep up.

Generative artificial intelligence-based tools are set to offer workers an enormous productivity boost, but business technology leaders charged with implementing them are scrambling to understand their potential cybersecurity risks.

Too fast, too risky? The challenge with generative AI is that the technology is developing so quickly that companies are rushing to figure out if it introduces new cybersecurity challenges or magnifies existing security weaknesses. Meanwhile, technology vendors have inundated businesses with new generative AI-based features and offerings—not all of which they need or have even paid for.

• Covid-19 infections are rising in the U.S.—ahead of the autumn months when respiratory illnesses typically surge—as another offshoot of the Omicron variant gains momentum.
   
• Price pressures continued cooling last month, fresh inflation figures showed, likely deterring the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates at its September meeting.
   
• A dispute between Australian energy companies and their workers has natural-gas buyers bracing for a possible curtailment of supply from one of the world’s largest exporters of the fuel.
   
• At least 55 people have been killed by wildfire that destroyed much of Lahaina, the historic former capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom and a popular tourist destination, officials said.

• WeWork revamped its board with experts in steering large corporate restructurings after raising doubts that it will survive.
   
• Yellow competitors are reaping a windfall of business after the trucker’s collapse, while customers face rising shipping costs.
   
• Democratic lawmakers seeking more information about private equity’s role in the healthcare sector have made little progress.
   
• European governments want a secure supply of critical minerals to power the green transition, but local opposition to new mines is often strong.

• Iran has freed five Americans from a notorious Tehran prison with the understanding that five of its own prisoners and billions of dollars in frozen revenue from energy sales would be released in return, U.S. and Iranian officials said.
   
• President Biden requested an additional $24 billion in defense, energy and humanitarian funding for Ukraine and other countries as part of a new $40 billion request to Congress to pay for items the administration termed critical.
   
• Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday recommended that former President Donald Trump stand trial in Washington on Jan. 2, 2024, two weeks before the first votes in the Republican presidential primary will be cast in Iowa’s Jan. 15 caucuses.
   
• Amazon.com is jettisoning dozens of its in-house brands as part of a significant reduction of its private-label operation as it works to fend off antitrust scrutiny and shore up profit. Meanwhile, millions of Amazon orders are arriving on doorsteps across the U.S. without extra packaging.
   
• X Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino said the social-media app formerly known as Twitter will keep an eye on competition such as Threads from Meta Platforms, but that what she is building with billionaire owner Elon Musk would be something new.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Follow Risk & Compliance editor David Smagalla @DSmagalla_DJ and reporters Mengqi Sun @_MengqiSun, Dylan Tokar @dgtokar and Richard Vanderford @VanderfordRich.

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