Stantec Inc., a Canadian-based environmental and engineering firm, has agreed to pay $4 million to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by submitting, or causing others to submit, false certifications in applications for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Brownfields Assessment Grants.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined Monzo Bank £21,091,300 for serious and repeated failures in its financial crime controls, citing deficiencies in the digital bank’s customer onboarding, risk assessment, and transaction monitoring systems between 2018 and 2022.
The European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA, and ESMA) have signed a detailed multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMoU) with the European Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA), formalizing how the institutions will cooperate and exchange information going forward.
The French government has fined online fashion retailer Shein €40 million after uncovering widespread deceptive practices in how the company advertised price reductions and promoted its environmental credentials.
Key Holding, a Delaware-based logistics firm with global operations, just learned the hard way that in the world of sanctions, ignorance isn’t bliss, it’s rather expensive. After acquiring a Colombian freight subsidiary in late 2021, the company failed to realize that the acquisition brought new obligations under U.S. sanctions laws. That oversight ultimately led to 36 unauthorized shipments to Cuba, triggering a $608,825 settlement with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
Five payment firms in Singapore just learned a costly lesson about weak anti-money laundering controls and why it won’t fly under the radar. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has issued $710,000 (S$960,000) in composition penalties after uncovering serious compliance failures across five licensed payment institutions. The firms (Remsea, Arcade Plaza Traders, J-Dee Remittance, Mobile Community Tech, and OxPay SG) were found to have fallen short of core safeguards meant to prevent financial crime.
The UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has stepped up its efforts to combat cross-border corruption by officially joining the International Anti-Corruption Coordination Centre (IACCC), an elite global law enforcement alliance housed within the UK’s National Crime Agency.