When the UK introduced civil monetary penalties for financial sanctions breaches in 2017, penalties were rare and investigations stretched across years. The dominant compliance question was whether the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) would act at all. That question has been answered. OFSI now resolves cases through negotiation, and on 19 March 2026 it concluded its first settlement. Yet the most revealing feature of that case is not the penalty imposed. It

Two former employees of TD Bank, N.A. have been sentenced to prison in the US for their roles in enabling money laundering and fraud from within the institution, in cases prosecuted by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The outcomes are a pointed reminder that the control environment is only ever as strong as the people operating it. Wilfredo Aquino, an assistant store manager, received 46 months after admitting he conspired to launder monetary instruments. Between 2019 and Feb

A federal jury in Boston has convicted Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, a 43-year-old dual US-Iranian national from Natick, Massachusetts, of conspiring to export sophisticated American microelectronics to Iran in breach of US sanctions. Following a 14-day trial, Sadeghi was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (ITSR), together with two substantive counts under

When the European Union created the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) in mid-2024, the ambition was framed in institutional terms: a single supervisor to end two decades of fragmented, directive-led enforcement. Yet the most consequential development of 2026 is not about who AMLA will supervise. It is about how risk itself must now be measured, evidenced and defended across the entire Union. The reforms unveiled this spring do not adjust the procedural furniture of compl

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has charged Richard Bloomfield with five counts of insider dealing, alleging that he traded on confidential information obtained through his professional role. According to the FCA, Mr Bloomfield was working as a solicitor at a law firm on the acquisition of Seraphine Group PLC. It is alleged that he used inside information acquired through that work to deal in the securities of Seraphine Group PLC on five occasions between 28 March 2022

Europe's financial regulators have signalled that AI-driven cyber threats now warrant supervisory attention in their own right. On 7 July 2026, the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) — the European Banking Authority (EBA), the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) — publicly backed a warning from the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) that frontier AI models pose systemic cyber risks to th

When the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Nationwide Building Society £44m on 12 December 2025 for anti-financial crime systems and controls failings between October 2016 and July 2021, it read like a familiar story of weak technology and incomplete due diligence. The regulator described ineffective systems for keeping customer risk assessments current and for monitoring transactions, failings serious enough that the society missed a customer using personal accounts to

The Payments Vision Delivery Committee (PVDC) has published a policy paper clarifying how the United Kingdom's next-generation retail payments infrastructure should accommodate financial crime controls, providing supporting context to the design consultation opened by the Retail Payments Infrastructure Board (RPIB) on 25 June 2026. The RPIB consultation, chaired by the Bank of England, addresses the core clearing and messaging layer that will eventually replace the rails unde

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged Catherine Beth Washburn, 37, of Irondequoit, New York, with attempting to provide material support to the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years' imprisonment and a $250,000 fine. According to the criminal complaint, Washburn made approximately 80 separate transfers of cryptocurrency totalling around 30,116 USDC (roughly $30,116

His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has for the first time publicly named a company accepting a compound settlement for breaching Russia sanctions, marking a material shift in the transparency of UK strategic export enforcement. Petrofac Facilities Management Limited (PFML) paid £569,157 to settle breaches committed in 2022 and 2023, when the firm supplied sanctioned industrial goods to individuals connected to Russia and provided related technical assistance while windi

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published the final tranche of its cryptoasset rulebook, completing the regulatory roadmap that will govern trading platforms, custodians, intermediaries, stablecoin issuers and staking arrangers operating in the United Kingdom. The framework crystallises the perimeter established when legislation brought cryptoassets within the FCA's remit in February 2026, and sets a hard commencement date of 25 October 2027 for the mandatory author

A UK-registered company now sits on the US sanctions list. Cucumber Sweet Waves Ltd is among nine entities blocked by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in a coordinated action against the fuel-smuggling network of Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), issued alongside a supplemental Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Alert on the laundering typologies that sustain it. For UK institutions, the British nexus is the immediate point of exposure: any coun