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Hello! It’s May 31, and we’re tracking today’s top stories: Budget deal means less money for IRS law enforcement, dark fleet moves Russian oil with sophisticated spoofing, 1MDB fugitive Jho Low placed in Macau, Q&A with hacker Wazawaka, and much more…

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🎯McCarthy’s sales pitch for his deal: Less money for law enforcement. The right’s inherent skepticism of government power generates an enormous political opportunity to cast increased IRS funding as part of a nefarious plot to make non-wealthy Americans’ lives harder. [more]

Top Stories

🔸Fake Signals and American Insurance: How a Dark Fleet Moves Russian Oil. During at least 13 voyages, the three tankers pretended to be sailing west of Japan. In reality, they were at terminals in Russia and shipping oil to China. [more]

🔸1MDB fugitive Jho Low placed in Macau as associates in spotlight. Malaysia’s anti-corruption body reveals Jho Low’s alleged whereabouts after questioning of 1MDB suspect Kee Kok Thiam. [more]

🔸A Q&A with Wazawaka: The FBI’s cyber Most Wanted says new designation won’t affect his work. The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to Matveev’s arrest. [more]

🔸US unveils Caesar sanctions on Syrian money service businesses. As part of the tranche of sanctions, the Treasury Department also blacklisted the three brothers who own and operate Al-Fadel Exchange, which it said has also facilitated payments from the regime to a Hezbollah financial official. [more]

🔸US sanctions Chinese and Mexican firms over fentanyl making equipment. The United States sanctioned more than a dozen Chinese and Mexican companies on Tuesday, accusing them of shipping or selling equipment that makes counterfeit pills. [more]

🔸How new EU sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards could backfire. More than 200 Iranian individuals and 37 entities have now been blacklisted by the EU in an eighth round of sanctions. [more]

🔸TikTok Creators’ Financial Info, Social Security Numbers Have Been Stored In China. TikTok has stored the most sensitive financial data of its biggest stars — including those in its “Creator Fund” — on servers in China. [more]

🔸Italy police arrest 40 mafia suspects for drug smuggling via Chinese money brokers. The breakthrough comes less than a month after an operation in which European police arrested more than 100 mafia suspects in a major operation. [more]

🔸Crypto Exchange bitFlyer Aligns Itself With FATF 'Travel Rule' With New Restrictions. Restrictions targeting 21 countries include only allowing select crypto and transfers to platforms that comply with Coinbase-led Travel Rule Universal Solution Technology (TRUST). [more]

🔸UAE Central Bank Issues AML/CTF Guidance for Dealing With Virtual Assets. The new guidance discusses the risks arising from dealing with virtual assets and virtual asset service providers, including on due diligence for licensed financial institutions. [more]

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IN THE NEWS

Russia

🔸US to announce new sanctions on Russia. The United States will announce new sanctions against Russia, which will entail control over the exports of technologies used in Iranian kamikaze drones. [more]

🔸How a High-Value Russian Wanted by the U.S. Escaped From Italy. Artem Uss was awaiting extradition to the U.S. Italy’s failure to hold on to him has left red faces in Rome. [more]

🔸EU sanctions pro-Russian oligarch over plan to ‘destabilize’ Moldova. The Moldovan-Israeli Ilan Shor stands accused of working with Moscow to create unrest in the former Soviet republic. [more]

China

🔸Three New China-Russia-Iran and Iraq Agreements Confirm The New Oil Market Order. Like a very dark version of the old U.S. soap opera parody ‘Soap’ this real-life version is equally convoluted, albeit a lot less funny. [more]

🔸US Clamps Down on Sensitive Export Requests to China. The U.S. government is closely scrutinizing exports to China and last year denied or took no action on a quarter of requests in order to stop sales that would advance Beijing's militarization. [more]

🔸Chinese tech entrepreneurs keen to 'de-China' as tensions with US soar. China tech business owners say they need to go further and gain permanent residency or citizenship abroad to avoid the curbs on and the biases against Chinese companies in the United States. [more]

Cyber

🔸Capita cyber-attack: 90 organizations report data breaches. Capita’s systems are used to administer pension funds for several large firms, including Royal Mail and Axa, covering millions of policyholders. [more]

🔸RaidForums user data leaked online a year after DOJ takedown. The exposed data is already likely in the hands of law enforcement following RaidForums’ seizure by U.S. authorities, but may help security researchers investigating the forum’s historic activity. [more]

🔸Android apps with spyware installed 421 million times from Google Play. Security researchers at Dr. Web discovered the spyware module and tracked it as 'SpinOk,' warning that it can steal private data stored on users' devices and send it to a remote server. [more]

Corruption & Financial Crime

🔸Ramaswamy fires consultants who worked simultaneously for LIV golf. Gitcho Goodwin, the firm led by longtime political operatives Gail Gitcho and Henry Goodwin, registered retroactively on May 25 as foreign agents for the Saudi-funded LIV Golf league. [more]

🔸German tax fraud mastermind handed further 8-year jail sentence. Hanno Berger, a former tax inspector turned legal tax expert, was sentenced on Tuesday to eight years and three months in jail by a court in Wiesbaden, as the nation comes to terms with one of its biggest post-war frauds. [more]

🔸The Supreme Court was enabling corruption well before the Clarence Thomas scandal. What’s less widely appreciated is the court’s accumulating record of making political corruption easier to engage in and harder to prosecute. [more]

"It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light." --Aristotle

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