Author: Elizabeth Hearst

Regulatory Watch News

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  FinCEN Issues Alert on Oil Smuggling Schemes on the U.S. Southwest Border Associated with Mexico-Based Cartels

  FinCEN

  May 1, 2025

  Today, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is issuing an Alert in coordination with the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Homeland Security Investigations, urging financial institutions to be vigilant in detecting, identifying, and reporting suspicious activity connected to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), Sinaloa Cartel, Gulf Cartel, and other Mexico-based transnational criminal organizations smuggling stolen crude oil from Mexico across the U.S. southwest border into the United States. In recent years, fuel theft in Mexico, including crude oil smuggling, has become the most significant non-drug illicit revenue source for the Cartels. According to U.S. law enforcement authorities, the Cartels are using complicit Mexican brokers in the oil and natural gas industry to smuggle and sell crude oil stolen from Mexico’s Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to complicit, small U.S.-based oil and natural gas companies operating near the U.S. southwest border. As part of these schemes, the Cartels are stealing billions of dollars of crude oil, fueling rampant violence and corruption across Mexico, and undercutting legitimate oil and natural gas companies in the United States.

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  SFO opens European data centre bribery investigation

  Serious Fraud Office

  May 1, 2025

  The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) today searched five properties and made three arrests as it announced a new multi-million pound international bribery investigation. The target of the investigation is UK company Blu-3 and former associates of the global construction firm Mace Group. The operation included a search of a suspect’s premises today by Monaco authorities with assistance from the SFO. Individuals at Blu-3 are suspected of paying over £3 million of bribes to former associates of Mace Group in relation to the construction of a data centre in the Netherlands for the technology giant Microsoft.

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  OLAF and Polish authorities uncover major VAT import fraud scheme

  OLAF

  May 1, 2025

  Close cooperation between the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) and Polish national authorities has led to the uncovering of a sophisticated VAT fraud scheme involving goods imported from China into the European Union. Acting on intelligence and information provided by OLAF, Polish authorities carried out a criminal investigation, resulting in the arrest of four individuals and searches at 50 locations across the country. Working closely with customs and fiscal authorities in Poland, Germany, Czechia, Lithuania, and Latvia, OLAF identified a complex network exploiting the so-called "customs procedure 42"—a mechanism that allows for deferred VAT payments on goods imported into one Member State and transported to another.