THIRD COUNTRIES: Grey Lists and Black Lists – what today’s AML announcement from Brussels means for policy and ML/TF threats from outside the Union

Regulatory Watch News

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  Food City Agrees to Pay over $8M to Settle False Claims Act Allegations Related to Opioid Dispensing

  US Department of Justice

  December 23, 2024

  K-VA-T Food Stores Inc. doing business as Food City (Food City), a regional grocery store chain headquartered in Abingdon, Virginia, has agreed to settle the government’s allegations under the False Claims Act (FCA) related to its dispensing of opioids and other controlled substances. Under the settlement, Food City will pay the United States $8,488,378. Food City will pay an additional $78,621 to the states of Virginia and Kentucky for claims paid to Food City by state Medicaid programs.

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  FMA issued more warnings to investors in 2024 than ever before – trading platform fraud is sadly a “growth area”

  FMA

  December 23, 2024

  Fraudsters are also “early adopters” and are the first to make use of new technologies and to exploit them for illegal purposes. Fake crypto-investments, fraudulent trading platforms and bogus celebrity endorsements using deepfake technology are a booming area. These are the findings of statistics compiled by the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) about consumer enquiries and investor warnings in the past year. “In 2024, too many people have fallen for fraudsters’ schemes in the hope of making money quickly”, remarked the FMA’s Executive Directors Helmut Ettl and Eduard Müller. “Even if their methods are modern, they use the same old stories to lure in their victims. High returns with a low risk. Secret investment tricks that the banks won’t tell you about. And which you need to take advantage of quickly, and not asking questions. And so on and so forth: if something sounds too good to be true, then it is probably a lie,” Ettl and Müller added.

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  SFC bans fund manager Ng Ka Shun for life and fines him $1.7 million for serious misconduct

  Securities and Futures Commission

  December 23, 2024

  The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has banned Mr Ng Ka Shun, responsible officer (RO) of Agg. Asset Management Limited (Agg), for life and fined him $1.7 million for window-dressing Agg’s financial resources and mismanaging two funds (Notes 1 to 3). Window-dressing financial resources The SFC found that Ng began window-dressing Agg’s financial resources when the firm submitted its licence application. He misled the SFC into believing that Agg had satisfied the financial requirements for a licence by window-dressing the firm’s liquid capital as of 31 March 2017.