Fintech Leonteq defends itself against accusations from the media that the company has enabled money laundering and tax evasion. Derivatives provider Leonteq has again...
According to a report by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), criminal investigations have been launched against Payvision, the Dutch media outlet FD reports. The Amsterdam-based ING subsidiary allegedly deliberately neglected money laundering controls for years. The Dutch regulator DNB reportedly warned ING about the deficiencies several times but saw little improvement. According to a FinTelegram report, Payvision, Rudolf Booker, and Cheng Lim Li are the suspects in this criminal case.
In September 2020, Israeli Gal Barak was sentenced to four years in prison by a court in Vienna for investment fraud and money laundering. He was released on parole in 2021 and has since launched the Vantage Fund in Israel to fund convicted cybercriminals and their startups. However, German prosecutors have also charged Barak as the prominent leader of the cybercrime organization E&G Bulgaria. The case is currently before the European Court of Justice.
FinTelegram launched a new series about the search for the vanished Wirecard millions. The only big question at Wirecard was and is where around €1.9 billion remained. The Wirecard collapse in 2020 triggered one of the biggest financial scandals in Germany. While founder and CEO Markus Braun is still in pre-trial custody, his Chief Operating Officer Jan Marsalek is on the run. The real question at Wirecard, however, is how the organization was structured at the time and whether the money was really ever at Wirecard in the first place. FinTelegram tries to connect some dots!
A Kenyan tribunal froze more than $40m in accounts belonging to fintech company Flutterwave under the country’s anti-money laundering laws. Kenya’s Assets Recovery Agency sought and was granted a High Court order to freeze several accounts with three banks belonging to Kenyan-registered Flutterwave Payment Technology Ltd.
An interesting report of Money Mobility Tracker®, a PYMNTS and Ingo Money collaboration, presents a survey that shows that customers of financial institutions (FI) expect both maximum money mobility and fraud protection. The faster money moves, the greater the risk of fraud but consumers typically resist fraud prevention measures, mainly when those safeguards seems to be inconvenient.
Cybercriminals and scammers embraced crypto ever since its inception. The US FTC reported that since the start of 2021, more than 46,000 people have reported losing over $1 billion in crypto to scams – that’s about one out of every four dollars reported lost, more than any other payment method. The median individual reported loss is $2,600. Nearly half the people who reported losing crypto to a scam since 2021 said it started with an ad, post, or message on a social media platform.
Reuters published an interesting report about the world's largest crypto platform Binance. According to the report, Binance processed transactions totaling at least $2.35 billion stemming from hacks, investment frauds, and illegal drug sales between 2017 and 2021. Allegedly, in 2019 Binance processed criminal funds totaling $770 million.
