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Hello!  It’s January 17, and we’re tracking a China COVID bombshell, Hamas' financial empire, JP Morgan's whistleblower penalty, a brutal cartel migrant trafficking war, and much more...

Featured Story

🎯 Chinese Lab Mapped Deadly Coronavirus Two Weeks Before Beijing Told the World. A Chinese researcher uploaded a nearly complete sequence of the virus’s structure to a U.S. government-run database on Dec. 28, 2019. WSJ 

💥 Chinese lab crafts mutant COVID-19 strain with 100% kill streak in ‘humanized’ mice. NYP

Top Stories

🌎 Hamas, Inc. Hamas is using key personnel to set up companies around the Middle East and elsewhere to run its financial empire. Newsweek

📌 House Republicans demand testimony from head of UNRWA over Hamas aid NYP

📌 EU to slap new sanctions on Hamas Politico

🌎 J.P. Morgan to Pay $18 Million for Whistleblower Protection Violations. The settlement is one of the first cases brought under key whistleblower rule. WSJ

🌎 Severed heads found in cooler as cartels fight over lucrative migrant trade. Perpetrators leave messages at separate crime scenes threatening each other in Mexican border town. Border Report

🚩 Treasury Sanctions Former Guatemalan Official for Engaging in Mining-related Corruption U.S. Treasury

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The State of Financial Compliance Report

225 compliance leaders have spoken. Here's what they said...

🌎 White House set to renew terrorist designation of Houthi rebels. The move would reverse the original decision made by the State Department in February of 2021. CBS

🌎 UBS Wins as Credit Suisse Money-Laundering Probe Axed. UBS got a boost in one of the litanies of legal disputes it inherited from Credit Suisse. Bloomberg

📕 Global Financial Crime Report Nasdaq

🌎 Turkish Banks Tighten Screws on Russia Over Fear of US Sanctions. The squeeze comes as Turkey seeks to be removed from an international “gray” list. Bloomberg

📕 The Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions At Risk from Digital Asset Growth GAO

🌎 French court rules Lafarge can be probed over Syria crimes. Lafarge paid millions to ISIS militants to keep running its operations in Syria. DW

🚩 Zero-Day Alert: Update Chrome Now to Fix New Actively Exploited Vulnerability Hacker News

Many more top stories at Illicit Edge...

IN THE NEWS

China

🇨🇳 Welcome to Narcotopia, the CIA-backed drug state standing up to China Telegraph

🇨🇳 Fashion Giant Faces New IPO Hitch: China’s Cybersecurity Police Bloomberg

🇨🇳 Why China’s government is hushing up court rulings Economist

🇨🇳 It’s not time to hit China with financial sanctions — yet Hill

Russia

🇷🇺 No default risk in event of Russian asset confiscation Reuters

🇷🇺 India turns to Mideast oil as sanctions keep Russian crude tankers stuck at ports Insider

🇷🇺 Belgium PM says mechanism needed for confiscation of 280B euros of Russian assets Reuters

🇷🇺 Russian air passengers face peril as planes show strain of sanctions WaPo

Corruption & Financial Crime

💸 Maduro Appoints Recently Freed Saab as Venezuela Investment Head Bloomberg

💸 IRS Leaker Sought Job With Aim of Releasing Trump Tax Returns WSJ

💸 It’s Time to Confront the Taliban’s Corruption Diplomat

💸 House probe starts after $127M in bailout funds paid to dead Teamsters’ pension plan NYP

Crypto & Cyber

🔐 Sharing Fake Nude Images Could Become a Federal Crime Under Proposed Law NBC

🔐 How a ‘crypto drainer’ tricked people into handing over $80M in assets worldwide Record

🔐 Sam Bankman-Fried's Parents Ask Court to Dismiss FTX's Lawsuit Seeking to Recover Funds CoinDesk

🔐 Coinbase's SEC Clash Faces First Major Test as Judge Weighs Longshot Dismissal CoinDesk

Many more top stories at Illicit Edge...

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