Illicit Edge

TOP STORIES —

NEW PODCAST DROP! Coercive Capital with Elaine Dezenski — The Corruption Continuum with Scott Greytak & Casey Michel

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🎯 A huge bank pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money, so why weren’t top executives charged? By any measure, the lawbreaking by the U.S. subsidiary of Canada’s Toronto-Dominion Bank was spectacular. LAT

🎙️ Illicit Edge Original: The Corruption Continuum with Elaine Dezenski, Scott Greytak & Casey Michel Coercive Capital

🌎 China Hack Enabled Vast Spying on U.S. Officials, Likely Ensnaring Thousands of Contacts. Hackers scooped up call logs, unencrypted texts and some audio, piercing America’s communications infrastructure. WSJ

💥 FBI Seeks Public Help to Identify Chinese Hackers Behind Global Cyber Intrusions Hacker News

🌎 Turkey Launching Ruble Swap to Ease Trade Squeezed by Sanctions. Firms are finding creative ways around payment issues while creating lucrative opportunities for middlemen. Bloomberg

🚩 To counter the Axis of Evasion, the US must tackle third-country procurement networks Atlantic Council

🚩 US arrests Turkish businessman accused of helping Venezuela skirt sanctions AP

🌎 Inside the Massive Crime Industry That’s Hacking Billion-Dollar Companies. When you download a piece of pirated software, you’re entering a highly complex hacking ecosystem that’s fueling some of the biggest breaches on the planet. Wired

🌎 Investigators search Netflix offices in France and the Netherlands. Searches were being conducted simultaneously as part of a preliminary investigation into tax fraud and money laundering. NBC

🌎 How Syria Became the Middle East’s Drug Dealer. Bashar al-Assad has propped up his regime by exploiting the Middle East’s love of captagon. New Yorker

🌎 Biden-Harris Admin Sued for Obstructing Probe Into Embattled Iran Envoy Rob Malley. ‘There is mass confusion on what authority Malley had to view classified documents and when he had it’. Free Beacon

🌎 Oxfam says $41B of the World Bank’s climate spending ‘effectively unaccounted for’. The bank has pledged tens of billions to climate projects but can’t say how much was actually spent. ICIJ

🌎 FBI finds $8.3M embezzled by ‘pure evil’ Kansas banker in a cryptocurrency account in the Cayman Islands. Dozens of people whose life savings had been embezzled learned that federal law enforcement had recovered their money. Fortune

🌎 Kidnapped, trafficked and incarcerated: The unsettling death of a Rohingya child in India. Two years after Hamida Begum vanished from a Bangladesh refugee camp, she was found dead at a detention center in mysterious circumstances. Telegraph

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RUSSIA

🇷🇺 Russian rocket launches Iranian satellites into orbit as Moscow and Tehran expand ties AP

🇷🇺 Russia suspected of sending incendiary devices on US- and Canada-bound planes CNN

🇷🇺 Russia’s Oil Fleet and the Floating Armories That Help Keep Profits Flowing Bloomberg

🇷🇺 Virginia company, senior executives charged with exporting U.S. technology to Russia UPI

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CHINA

🇨🇳 Chinese Money Launderers’ Guilty Pleas Highlight China’s Role in America’s Fentanyl Crisis FDD

🇨🇳 Star Hedge Fund’s Surge in China Threatened by US Indictment Bloomberg

🇨🇳 Rare earths in spotlight amid US-China tensions, Myanmar turmoil SCMP

🇨🇳 Did U.S. Semiconductor Export Controls Harm Innovation? CSIS

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CORRUPTION & FINANCIAL CRIME

💸 ‘Fat Leonard,’ Navy contractor behind one of the military’s biggest scandals, sentenced to 15 years AP

💸 Co-creator of UndeadApes NFTs found guilty of fraud and money laundering in ‘rug pull’ scheme Art Newspaper

💸 Harvard University must face narrowed lawsuit over antisemitism Reuters

💸 Central Figure in Philippines COVID Corruption Scandal Spent $20M on Dubai Property OCCRP

💸 Leader Of International Stock Manipulation Ring Pleads Guilty DOJ

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CRYPTO & CYBER

🔐 Canadian authorities say they arrested hacker linked to Snowflake data breaches TechCrunch

🔐 New Android Banking Malware ‘ToxicPanda’ Targets Users with Fraudulent Money Transfers Hacker News

🔐 Fintech lender Dave accused of misleading needy borrowers Semafor

🔐 South Korea fines Meta $15M for illegally collecting information on Facebook users AP

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TRAFFICKING

🚚 Anti-trafficking activist exposes how ‘slave ledger’ is being used by smugglers to control migrants Fox

🚚 Texas Troops Seize $5M Worth of Meth Stashed In Hidden Compartment Newsweek

🚚 Italian Dealer Accused of Trafficking 2,000 Artifacts Wanted by U.S. Authorities Artnet

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RESEARCH AND MULTIMEDIA

📘 Ecuador’s Risky War on Narcos New Yorker

📘 New $72K Migrant Smuggling Routes to the U.S. Start With Charter Flights Reuters

📘 Money Laundering National Risk Assessment Singapore MAS

📘 A better anti-corruption machine Brookings

📘 Ransomware Victim Insights RUSI

📘 Standards and interoperability: The future of the global financial system Atlantic Council

📘 U.S. Foreign Extortion Prevention Act: New Tool in the Fight Against Global Corruption TI

📘 How We Uncovered the Modus Operandi of Criminals Smuggling Illegal Gold out of Venezuela Pulitzer Center

📘 Illicit Drugs Are Undermining Pacific Security USIP

ILLICIT EDGE INSIGHTS

📌 China’s Oppression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang

📌 How Are U.S. Financial Sanctions Developed?

📌 Top 10 Ways Iran Supports and Empowers Hamas

📌 Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program: A Dangerous Evolution

📌 Top 10 Ways Money Launderers Are Caught Red-Handed

📌 What are the Top 10 Books on Corruption, Kleptocracy, and Illicit Financing?

📌 What Are 10 Ways China Is Stealing Intellectual Property?

📌 These are Mexico’s Most Powerful Drug Cartels

📌 The Hypocrisy of Labeling Terrorists as ‘Militants’

📌 Sanctions and the IRGC: How Iran’s Paramilitary Group Profits from Economic Hardship

📌 What are the Arguments For and Against ESG?

VIDEOS

INFLUENCERS

Kim Zetter / Brian Krebs / Nicole Perlroth /
Josh Rogin / Ellen Nakashima / Matt Levitt /
Clarissa Ward / Gary Kasparov / Joseph Cox / Mark Dubowitz
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya / Bill Browder / Jen Easterly /
Zack Kopplin / Laura Shin / Dmitri Alperovitch / Tom Keatinge
Catherine Belton / Nazanin Boniadi / Chris Krebs /
Kevin Hall / Farnaz Fassihi / Kevin Collier / Patrick Howell O’Neill /
Michael McFaul / Jonathan Schanzer / Catalin Cimpanu /
Liza Lin / Enes Kanter FREEDOM / Bianna Golodryga

RESOURCES

Financial Action Task Force /
Egmont Group /
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project /
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists /
Money Laundering Watch/
C4ADS /
Combating Terrorism Center /
Royal United Services Institute /

PODCASTS

🎙️ Conversation with an Exiled Venezuelan Opposition Leader Lawfare

🎙️ Hezbollah’s Secret Missile Cities, Russia Advances In Ukraine, & Hamas Chief Fears For Life President’s Daily Brief

🎙️ Fox News, defamation, and our new information reality Click Here

🎙️ Deep Cover: George Santos Pushkin

🎙️ Conversation with Former FATF President RUSI

🎙 ️The problem with the Nigerian economy has nothing to do with crypto Click Here

🎙 ️Crypto ATMs, a Senator Convicted, AUSTRAC Report, Timeshare Fraud, etc. AML Conversations

🎙 ️Sanctions and Russia’s Nuclear Diplomacy RUSI

🎙 ️Partnering with terrorists to fight terrorists Generation Jihad

🎙 ️Allen Stanford: The Lord of the Lies Scamfluencers

IN OTHER NEWS

🎯 Forbidden luxury enters Russia from the south. The constant flow of high-end cars, jewelry, and watches shows the limits of Western sanctions. El Pais

🌎 Swindler’s List of Cons: Gardai identify 1k people linked to ultra-violent Black Axe cyber gang as over €84m laundered through Irish banks. Sun

🌎 Texas AG says Catholic charity is smuggling migrants into US, running a ‘stash house’. Paxton launched an investigation, demanding the immediate release of documentation about its migrant clients, which it has refused to do. NYP

🌎 Biden’s Biggest Foreign Policy Legacy Will Be in Economic Warfare. His administration has pushed back harder against rivals and adversaries and done so with more potent tools. Bloomberg

📌 Joe Biden’s Iran Oil Sanctions Failure National Interest

🌎 Russian Tycoon Usmanov Pays €4 Million to Settle German Criminal Probe. The probe will be dropped after Usmanov pays millions to charities. Bloomberg

🌎 Disgraced Lebanese Central Banker Who Was a Fugitive Now Awaits His Fate. Riad Salameh was arrested on graft charges and accused of undermining Lebanon’s economy, as the Israel-Hezbollah war further destabilizes the country. WSJ

🌎 The west must outdo rival efforts to build an alternative financial system. Technological and geopolitical competition between democracies and autocracies are two sides of the same coin. FT

🌎 Biden Wanted to Fix Immigration, but Leaves Behind a System That Is Still Broken. President Biden’s his actions have moved the problem deeper into the country. NYT

🌎 ‘Official Partners’ of Azerbaijan’s COP29 Climate Summit Linked To Ruling Aliyev Family. If you’re traveling all the way to Azerbaijan to attend the world’s most important climate change conference, you might as well do it in style. OCCRP

🌎 A Luxury Giant, a Reclusive Heir and the Case of the Missing $13 Billion. A member of the Hermès family says his fortune is gone. WSJ

🌎 Britain’s art-loving elite fumes at money laundering crackdown. Experts fear tough rules for the art world meant to root out criminals will send business to New York and Hong Kong. Politico

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RUSSIA

🇷🇺 Patterns in sanctions on Russian individuals CEPR

🇷🇺 Moldova’s pro-Western president wins 2nd term in runoff overshadowed by Russian meddling claims CNN

🇷🇺 Russia to launch two Iranian satellites on Nov. 5 Reuters

🇷🇺 As North Korean troops march toward Ukraine, does a Russian quid pro quo reach space? Ars

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CHINA

🇨🇳 Chinese Hedge Fund Manager Indicted by US in Trade Secrets Case Bloomberg

🇨🇳 Chinese solar firms go where US tariffs don’t reach Reuters

🇨🇳 Report finds China targeted AstraZeneca in fraud probe over cancer treatment SCMP

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CORRUPTION & FINANCIAL CRIME

💸 Australian Mining Billionaire Ellison to Step Down After Probe Into Payments Bloomberg

💸 Facebook, Nvidia ask US Supreme Court to spare them from securities fraud suits Reuters

💸 Malaysia Orders Sovereign Fund Audit on Loss-Making Venture Bloomberg

💸 How One of the Tiniest Oil Markets Cost Trafigura Over $1B Bloomberg

💸 Taxpayers can’t pay for ‘misconduct of banks’ Reuters

💸 Police Search PwC Sydney Office Amid Tax Scandal Investigation Bloomberg

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