Plus: Biden's Iran Strategy – Circumventing Congress with 'The Agreement That Must Not Be Named'...
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6/19/23

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Breaking News for Financial Crime Professionals

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Happy Monday! It’s June 19, and we’re tracking today’s top stories: The Vietnam vets who supersized the War on Drugs, Tether’s banking relationships exposed, Russia’s grim ‘fashion colony’, Biden’s new Iran deal skirts Congress, and more.

 

Plus, check out this week’s upcoming U.S. congressional testimonies…

Featured Story

 

🎯‘Jurassic Narcs’: The Vietnam Vets Who Supersized the War on Drugs. If a sledgehammer is a blunt tool for solving a problem, the DEA’s first agents were wrecking balls. Motivated by a hatred of drugs and often tormented by wartime demons, these agents became crusaders, a ’70s and ’80s version of The Untouchables. Daily Beast

 

Top Stories

 

🔸Tether’s Banking Relationships, Commercial Paper Exposure Detailed in Newly Released Legal Documents. Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China Hong Kong, Bank of Communications, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, and more all issued commercial paper and securities that Tether used to back its token. CoinDesk

 

🔸Russia’s Grim ‘Fashion Colony’: Americans Describe Harsh Life in Remote Labor Camp. In addition to dealing with dangerous working conditions and scant medical care, American inmates at IK-17 say they face corrupt administrators, severe retribution for perceived infractions and barely enough food to get by. WSJ

 

🔸Biden administration won't acknowledge Iran deal explicitly to skirt Congress. Legally, the president may enter into an executive agreement without approval from Congress, so in that sense, INARA-based congressional review can’t stop President Joe Biden from doing what he wants. Jerusalem Post

 

🔸Eric Schmidt Buys Abandoned Alfa Nero Superyacht for $67.6 Million. The yacht was linked to Andrey Guryev, who made his money in the fertilizer business and was sanctioned last year by the US Treasury Department following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Bloomberg

 

🔸He Went After Crypto Companies. Then Someone Came After Him. Mr. Roche was felled by his own loose lips and his overly cozy relationship with a client. But he also was the victim of an elaborate international setup. NY Times

 

🔸Sanctions-hit Huawei demands royalties from Japanese companies. It is highly unusual for a major manufacturer to directly negotiate with smaller clients regarding patent fees, but Huawei is facing an increasingly tough business environment as U.S. sanctions make it difficult to sell products overseas. Nikkei

 

🔸China bankers told to shun flashy clothes, 5-star hotels in austerity drive. China's top graft-busting watchdog earlier this year vowed to eliminate ideas of a Western-style "financial elite" and rectify the hedonism of excessive pursuit of "high-end taste". Reuters


🔸Binance, SEC reach agreement to keep US customer assets in country.
The defendants, which include CEO Changpeng Zhao, agreed to repatriate assets held for the benefit of US customers. The agreement makes sure those assets are protected and remain in the United States to prevent them from moving offshore. CNN

 

🔸Biden & Co. keep funding Palestinian terror in defiance of Congress. Congress clearly determined that PA terror payments encourage violence, which is why it passed the Taylor Force Act, barring economic assistance that “directly benefits the Palestinian Authority” until it “stops all payments incentivizing terror.” NY Post

 

🔸More Republicans want to take the fight to Mexico’s cartels. Experts say it’s a bad idea. A fringe idea to directly take on the Mexican cartels with the U.S. military is gaining some traction in the Republican party — even as critics warn that any unilateral action would endanger relations with Mexico and fail to alleviate the flow of drugs across the border. The Hill

IN THE NEWS

China

 

🌎 The US Navy, NATO, and NASA are using a shady Chinese company’s encryption chips Wired

 

🌎 China's ByteDance Has Gobbled Up $1 Billion of Nvidia GPUs for AI This Year Tom’s Hardware

 

🌎 Meet ‘Heina’ Chen, The Secretive Executive Holding The Purse Strings At Binance Forbes

 

🌎 Amid US-China rivalry, a landmark science deal faces new scrutiny Reuters

Russia

 

🌎 UK to keep Russia assets frozen until Ukraine is compensated Reuters

 

🌎 Legislation Reintroduced In U.S. Congress Aims To Use Frozen Russian Assets To Assist Ukraine Radio Free Europe

 

🌎 The USDA is investigating a ‘possible data breach’ related to the global Russian cybercriminal hack CNN

 

🌎 Russia's Yandex fined for refusing to share user information with security services Reuters

Corruption & Financial Crime

 

🌎 FTC leader bypassed ethics official’s recusal request on Meta case Washington Times

 

🌎 Power companies spend millions to fight Maine’s proposed non-profit utility Guardian

 

🌎 Interpol issues notice for Lebanese man suspected of trafficking in looted antiquities ABC News

Cyber & Crypto

 

🌎 Taliban Rely on WhatsApp, but keep getting kicked off Insider

 

🌎 Binance cancels registration in the UK amid regulatory scrutiny Cointelegraph

 

🌎 Kim Dotcom is ‘not giving an inch’ after sentencing of two Megaupload execs The Verge

 

🌎 Microsoft says early June disruptions to Outlook, cloud platform, were cyberattacks AP

 

🌎 U.S. Energy Dept gets two ransom notices as MOVEit hack claims more victims Reuters

Congressional Testimony

 

📕 Examining U.S. and Global Commitments to Combatting Human Trafficking U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee

 

📕 Threats Posed to the Homeland by Nation-State Actors in Latin America U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security

 

📕 Artificial Intelligence: Advancing Innovation Towards the National Interest U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

 

📕 Responding to Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israel Bias in the UN, Palestinian Authority, and NGO Community U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee

 

📕 Oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission U.S. House Financial Services Committee

"The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species." --Christopher Hitchens

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