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*UAE family-owned businesses still debt shy, says top CFO

In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), family-owned businesses contribute up to 70% of GDP, according to the ministry of economy, and continue to be a powerful force in the Gulf region, the ACT Middle East Treasury Summit 2024 was told.…

With the global commodities market valued at USD121.2 trillion in 2024 and expected to generate USD136.8 trillion in 2029 (1), the scope for fraudsters to make money from this sector is vast. German statistical service Statista notes that commodities sales have latent augmentation, given that it all includes emissions trading systems expanding worldwide, along with energy products, food and drink, precious and industrials metals and more.…

The advent of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) digital tools that can create content including text, computer code, images, audio, sound, and video, in response to a user’s ‘prompt’ – usually a short written description of the desired output – has exposed new vulnerabilities for intellectual property (IP) protection.…

There are undoubtedly vast amounts of data available through cryptocurrency blockchains for AML/CFT/CFP compliance, supervision and law enforcement, making increasingly available and sophisticated assessment tools more valuable.

Yong Li, Anti‑Money Laundering Advisor, for Canada-based consultancy The AMLShop, told MLB of the available crypto-ledger data: “Up to the end of last month, for Bitcoin it’s 596 gigabytes [GB] and for the Ethereum it is about 1,100 GB.…

Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, and the ensuing Israeli war on Gaza, the Palestinian banking sector has been caught in the crosshairs. Meanwhile, Hamas continues to get funding as the war enters its 10th month.

The Palestinian banking sector, overseen by the Palestinian Authority (PA), has been under heightened pressure from the Israeli government following the Hamas-led attacks.…

Britain’ Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) GBP15 million (USD19.5 million) for failing to report suspicions that its client London Capital & Finance plc (LCF) might be involved in fraud. The FCA has concluded that PwC encountered significant red flags throughout a 2016 audit of LCF, including a senior executive at LCF controlling day-to-day operations acting aggressively towards auditors.…

Automakers selling battery electric vehicles (BEVs) into the 27-country European Union (EU) market are working hard to fulfill EU regulatory requirements to provide digital battery passports using a unique serial number and QR code from February 2027.  https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2023/07/10/council-adopts-new-regulation-on-batteries-and-waste-batteries/

The law was only adopted in July 2023, creating a compliance challenge for EU market automakers, many of them US-owned, said Beatriz Ildefonso, circularity and materials manager at the European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA), the suppliers representative body.…

The UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has charged five former top executives of Swiss commodities giant Glencore, including ex head of the oil division, Alex Beard, with bribery in West Africa from 2007 to 2014.
In an August 1 statement (1), the SFO said it had charged Beard, who was one of Glencore’s top executives from 2007 until his retirement in 2019, his second in command, Andrew Gibson, plus Paul Hopkirk, Ramon Labiaga and Martin Wakefield “with conspiring to make corrupt payments” to benefit Glencore in the awarding of various oil contracts in Cameroon, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast.…

The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has shut down a spoofing platform that enabled criminals to target 170,000 UK fraud victims and others worldwide through a phone handset and web app. Targets were defrauded of “tens of millions” of British pounds (GBP), said the NCA via this ‘Russian Coms’ system.…

The market for cigarettes in Taiwan has fluctuated during the past few years – sales were up in 2021 for example – but generally the trend has been downward, with the government tightening regulatory controls. According to London, UK-based market researcher data analytics and consulting company Euromonitor, in 2022 sales of licit cigarettes were 37.4 billion sticks, falling to 34.4 billion in 2023, (with illicit sales at 4.5 billion sticks and 4.6 billion sticks respectively).…