Business Better Podcast Episode: FinCEN’s Notice of Proposed Regulations to Strengthen and Modernize AML/CFT Compliance Programs
Crypto Year in Review 2022: Crypto Enforcement and the U.S. Treasury - The Crypto Exchange Podcast
On May 1, 2025, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) regarding the Huione Group, a foreign financial institution located in Cambodia. This proposal, enacted under...more
Regulatory clarity in the digital assets and crypto space continues to be a moving target. Yet, the interest among policymakers and regulators worldwide has never been more pronounced. In the United States, 2024 was a pivotal...more
Securities and Exchange Commission. Customer ID requirements. On May 13, 2024, SEC and FinCEN proposed a rule designed to make it more difficult for criminal actors to establish customer relationships with investment...more
The United States manages more than three dozen separate economic and trade sanctions programs. Those programs target specified foreign governments along with thousands of named individuals, groups and entities in accordance...more
The October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas have re-focused U.S. government efforts to identify and counter funding streams for Hamas and terrorist activity in general – including, in particular, through the use of...more
Legislation Targets Unhosted Wallets, Validators and Digital Asset ATMs - On July 28th, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), reintroduced the...more
In Short - The Situation: Terrorists may be increasingly turning to cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions and finance terrorist acts, as recent prosecutions and reports suggest. Under the Antiterrorism Act ("ATA"), as...more
In the fourth and final segment of our four-part Crypto Year in Review series, Ethan Ostroff, Keith Barnett, and Carlin McCrory discuss how the U.S. Treasury Department — including the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC)...more
U.S. regulators are signaling heightened expectations for anti-money laundering compliance within the crypto industry. Although FinCEN issued guidance in 2013 interpreting virtual currency “administrators” and “exchanges” as...more
Payments Firms Launch Crypto Products, New DeFi Price Indices Announced - A U.S. fintech company recently announced the launch of a fiat-to-crypto on-ramp, which facilitates fiat-to-crypto payments using “a customizable...more
On 14 September 2022, K2 Integrity hosted a webinar on considerations in the digital assets space. K2 Integrity Board Member Christopher Brummer and AML/CFT experts Mariano Federici and Alex Levitov discussed the current...more
Ankura's Nova O sits down with Mark McGrath, Ayana Murphy, and Elif Cinar to discuss the current anti-money laundering (AML) landscape in the latest Q&A with our Ankura experts. Learn more about responding to the increased...more
In 1970, Congress passed the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act, commonly known as the “Bank Secrecy Act” (BSA). The BSA is often referred to as an “anti-money laundering” (AML) law or jointly as “BSA/AML.” The...more
...Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces on February 24, the United States (U.S.), United Kingdom (UK), and the European Union (EU) have led a global sanctions campaign against Russia that has been...more
The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets (PWG), together with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), released a much-anticipated Report on...more
Recently, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department, released a report on ransomware trends stating that during the first half of 2021, 68 different ransomware variants...more
On October 8, 2021, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) issued a Regulatory Notice urging its member firms (i.e., broker-dealers) to consider how they will incorporate the U.S. Treasury Department’s...more
On September 21, 2021, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) levied its first sanctions against a Russian-operated virtual currency exchange involved in ransomware payments and published an...more
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has completed two of its early benchmark obligations arising out of the recently passed Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020 (the “AML Act”)... First, pursuant to the AML Act,...more
The United States Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) will hold a second FinCEN Exchange in August to discuss ways to combat increasingly sophisticated cyber and ransomware attacks. The FinCEN...more
Fourth and Final Post in a Series on the FATF Plenary Outcomes - As we have previously blogged, the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”) held its fourth Plenary on June 21-25, inviting delegates from around the world to...more
On January 7, 2021, the original 15-day comment period ended for a proposed rule announced by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) that would impose new reporting, recordkeeping...more
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”) recently hit the founder and primary operator of both Helix and Coin Ninja with a $60 million civil monetary penalty. These companies served as “mixers” or “tumblers” for...more
On October 8, 2020, Attorney General William Barr announced the release of a Cryptocurrency Enforcement Framework produced by the Department of Justice (DOJ) Cyber-Digital Task Force. The 83-page framework is intended to help...more
FinCEN Director Ken Blanco addressed this year’s Consensus Blockchain Conference on May 13, 2020. In a set of prepared remarks, Blanco recognized the unprecedented challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has created for...more