Category: Business

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are at the forefront of digital money adoption, offering valuable lessons for the rest of the world. While El Salvador has made headlines by granting legal tender status to Bitcoin, other LAC countries have made significant strides in the introduction of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to either enhance financial inclusion and payment systems’ resilience or lower cross-border remittances’ costs, as our recent research shows. [Read more]

European Union states on Tuesday gave the final nod to the world’s first comprehensive set of rules to regulate cryptoassets on Tuesday, piling pressure on countries such as Britain and the United States to play catch up. [Read more]

On January 1, 2021, the US Congress enacted the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Incorporated within the NDAA is the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 (AML Act), which created the most significant reforms to US anti-money laundering laws since the passage of the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act. These reforms have implications for companies and individuals with foreign operations and foreign bank accounts, virtual and cryptocurrency companies, and even art dealers, advisers and consultants. Key provisions of the AML Act are detailed below. [Read more]

Richard G. Maike was sentenced this week to 10 years in prison for running a pyramid scheme in 2013 and 2014. Doyce G. Barnes was sentenced today to 4 years in prison for his role in the pyramid scheme. The defendants were convicted after a federal jury trial that started in Owensboro, Kentucky on July 12, 2022, and concluded with the jury’s verdict on September 7, 2022, after four hours of deliberation. [Read more]

Partnerships between banks and financial technology (Bank-fintech) companies are a net-positive for consumers when done responsibly, the Treasury Department will say in a report due on Wednesday. [Read more]

On May 24, 2022, a former Louisville, Kentucky resident was convicted and sentenced for conspiring to commit money laundering by assisting in the unlawful purchase of automobiles with criminal proceeds. On May 26, 2022, a Prospect, Kentucky resident was convicted and sentenced for a financial crime involving money laundering. Also, the use of a nominee to purchase automobiles in order to conceal the source of the funds used. These convictions follow financial crime convictions of two additional men, one earlier this year, and the other last year. [Read more]

The United States economy shrank in the first three months of the year even though consumers and businesses kept spending at a solid pace, the government reported on Thursday, in a slight downgrade of its previous estimate for the January-March quarter. [Read more]

When you buy cryptocurrency, what are you actually buying? Is it an actual currency, a stock or is it a commodity? I believe crypto is the currency of the future. [Read more]