Featured Story
๐ฏ Colombian Banking Group Strikes $80 Million Settlement Over Highway Bribery Scheme. Prosecutors say Grupo Aval participated in a scheme to bribe officials for a contract to build a highway toll road in Colombiaโs northeast. WSJ
Top Stories
๐ US set to unveil long-awaited crackdown on real estate money laundering. The U.S. Treasury Department plans to propose a rule ending anonymous luxury home purchases, targeting a loophole used by corrupt individuals to conceal illicit gains. Reuters
๐ Bittrex Reaches $24M Settlement With SEC. Bittrex simultaneously operated a securities exchange, broker and clearinghouse without registering as any of these things with the regulator. CoinDesk
๐ Americans moved out of prison in deal that could see US releasing Iranian funds and prisoners. Five Americans imprisoned in Iran are now under house arrest, part of a US-Iran deal granting Tehran access to $6 billion in funds in return for their release. CNN
๐ How China Aims to Counter US โContainmentโ Efforts in Tech. Chinese President Xi Jinping is harking back to the countryโs tradition of central planning, marshaling private companies and trillions of dollars in public money to drive research and development. Bloomberg
๐ Putin's Oil Tsar Used Alias to 'Hide' Fortune. Russian oligarch and confidant of President Vladimir Putin has been accused of using a fake identity to hide his multimillion-dollar salary. Newsweek
๐ Putin profits off US and European reliance on Russian nuclear fuel. The U.S. and its European allies are importing vast amounts of nuclear fuel and compounds from Russia, providing Moscow with hundreds of millions of dollars in badly needed revenue as it wages war on Ukraine. AP
๐ Homeland Security report details how teen hackers exploited security weaknesses in some of the worldโs biggest companies. A group of teenage hackers managed to exploit systemic security weaknesses in US telecom carriers and the business supply chain. CNN
๐ Ecuador Became One of Worldโs Most Violent Nations Overnight. The assassination of a top presidential candidate put a prominent face on Ecuadorโs rapid transformation into one of the planetโs most violent countries. Bloomberg
๐ Switzerland Freaks Out After Veselnitskaya Plot Is Exposed. The Swiss are feeling the squeeze after a U.S. agency called them out for returning stolen money to sanctioned Russians. Daily Beast
๐ Cuban oil tankers becoming regular visitors to Mexican ports. Other Cuban ships have in recent years been repaired or inspected at a shipyard in Veracruz, Mexico, including U.S.-blacklisted Esperanza, which is currently there. Reuters
๐ National Intelligence Strategy DNI