Kleptocracy Weekly: March 10, 2017

U.S.

• The U.S. Treasury Department announced a $100 million settlement with Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment Corporation for breaching Iran sanctions.
• Trump should reconsider his stance on the mining transparency law, which has eliminated a critical anti-corruption rule that improved transparency in the opaque natural resources sector. (FT)

Europe

• A new European Parliament report lists the U.S. as a ‘leading’ financial secrecy haven. (Bloomberg)
• Chatham House examines the corruption and institutional failure that still plagues Moldova 25 years after independence, and argues that only the EU can hold the government coalition accountable for reform.
• Moldova’s parliament accused Russia’s intelligence service of intimidating politicians, following an investigation into alleged money laundering by Russian officials. (AP)
• A court in Kiev heard arguments on the $74 million embezzlement case against Ukraine’s top tax official. (WaPo)
• A British property tycoon’s key adviser was a director of a detective agency which made payments to the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko and to the former KGB officer accused of murdering him. (Guardian)
• More than 200 wealthy foreigners are choosing to pay £218,200 a year in tax rather than declare which of London’s £20m-plus mega-mansions they own. (Guardian)
• The European Parliament blamed Swiss lawyers’ lack of oversight and loopholes in the due diligence process when evaluating Switzerland’s role in revelations stemming from the Panama Papers. (Bloomberg)

Asia

• The South Korean president was impeached and removed from office over a major corruption scandal. (WaPo)
• An ex-BP executive is charged in a $4 million Singapore bribery case. (Financial Times)
• Transparency International reports that corruption challenges growth in China’s rust belt and that over 900 million people in the Asia had paid bribes in the past year to obtain basic public services like schooling and health care.

Global

• Trump helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that is allegedly a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. (New Yorker)
• Spanish authorities allege that Hares Youssef, a Syrian-Ukrainian businessman, linked his friend, exiled Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, to an organized crime network involved in money laundering. (Kyiv Post)
• The State Department suspects that Africa’s leading mobile money platform is vulnerable to money laundering. (Quartz)
• A new report by Forbes finds that almost 70% of money laundering and terrorist financing flows through legitimate financial institutions, yet less than 1% is seized and frozen.