Featured Story
🎯 UBS to pay $1.4 billion over fraud in residential mortgage-backed securities. The Justice Department alleged that the bank knew the mortgages underneath the securities were problematic or noncompliant but sold them anyway. CNBC
Top Stories
🌎 Trump indicted in Georgia 2020 election subversion probe. Prosecutors allege Trump and defendants engaged in "criminal enterprise" with 30 unindicted co-conspirators. CNN
🌎 Why Georgia's case against Trump could be so damaging. Georgia's expansive racketeering law — known as RICO — gives prosecutors a powerful tool to pursue charges in their investigation into Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Axios
🔥 IE Insights: What is the RICO Statute? Illicit Edge 🔥
🌎 The Caspian Sea Is a Sanctions-Busting Paradise. Ghost voyages and dark port calls by Russian and Iranian vessels are enabling both countries to circumvent Western sanctions and thrive in a shadow economy. Foreign Policy
🌎 Fast Living and Foreign Dealings: An F.B.I. Spy Hunter’s Rise and Fall. A close look at Mr. McGonigal’s life and career reveals an arc that appears to have little or nothing to do with espionage and international intrigue. Instead, it seems to be a quintessentially American story about greed. NY Times
🌎 Bankman-Fried used $100M in stolen FTX funds for political donations. An amended indictment accused the 31-year-old former billionaire of directing two FTX executives to evade contribution limits by donating to Democrats and Republicans, and to conceal where the money came from. Reuters
🌎 China’s $138 Billion Shadow Bank Spirals at Terrible Time for Xi. The under-the-radar group, often dubbed China’s Blackstone, operates at the heart of China’s once high-flying shadow banking market, which regulators have sought to corral since 2017. Bloomberg
🌎 The hunt for Russia’s secret ships. Turkey’s strategic straits are a trade superhighway — and a lifeline for the Kremlin’s war machine. Politico
🌎 Lebanon's interim central bank governor freezes assets of former chief and close associates. Mansouri ordered all accounts in Lebanese banks of the five individuals be frozen and lifted the bank secrecy requirements of the individuals at the request of judicial authorities. AP
🌎 Coinbase launches independent pro-crypto policy group. In June, the SEC escalated its enforcement campaign when it sued both Coinbase and Binance, the world’s top two crypto exchanges, saying the companies are illegally selling securities on unregistered exchanges. CNN
🌎 China Will Hunt You Down. Laos arrests Lu Siwei, a Chinese human-rights lawyer, enroute to the U.S. WSJ
🌎 Ransomware Tracker: The latest figures [August 2023] The Record
.png?upscale=true&width=800&upscale=true&name=ILLICIT%20EDGE%20(1200%20%C3%97%20200%20px).png)
