Tweet The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its annual Worldwide Threat Assessment on May 11, 2017, from the US Intelligence Community and compared to last year, there are many more international threats to world security. The Threat Assessment from the US is a summary of all of the threats facing the US, […]
China recovers assets in Vancouver real estate through state-owned bank lawsuit launched by Duhaime Law in landmark case.
Tweet Wide, Wide Net for Enablers Starting today, parts of the UK’s Finance Bill 2016 came into effect which allows the HMRC to go after so-called “enablers” who help UK tax payers avoid taxes using offshore schemes, services or arrangements, such as bank accounts, investment or broker accounts, trusts, companies, directors / officers or nominees. The amendments […]
Tweet Late last week, the Supreme Court of British Columbia approved a representative lawsuit for damages for slavery and crimes against humanity filed by three refugees from Eritea against Nevsun Resources Ltd., a BC incorporated mining company (“Nevsun“). The Reasons for Judgment are not the most clear, in part because the litigation involved an attempt […]
Tweet More scrutiny in US for real estate The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced that it is expanding its program to identify persons who may be hiding assets in residential properties in the US. The expansion adds additional cities to what are called the area for Geographic Targeting Orders (GTO). Title insurance agents in GTO […]
Tweet Summary of the Updates The US House Committee on Homeland Security released a number of updates and received testimony on the status of terrorist financing, terrorism and money laundering in the last few weeks with some interesting developments relevant to banks in terms of changes in terrorist financing typologies that should be added to […]
Tweet Panama Papers Driven Changes The US Treasury has announced several amendments, and proposed legislative amendments, to its anti-money laundering (“AML“) legislation in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal to tackle the disclosure of what is called “beneficial ownership.” Beneficial ownership means the beneficial, as opposed to the legal, owner of shares of a […]
Tweet In this story in Quartz, we explore how a new US law, HR158, the Visa Waiver Program Improvement Amendment Act 2015, will result in journalists and humanitarian aid works, and many others being branded a terrorist risk for visiting Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Sudan, and how the new law will affect the ability […]
Tweet Terrorist risks for refugees There appears to be a debate that has the potential to escalate in this country in respect of whether there are risks for Canada in taking in 25,000 Syrian refugees. No decision is ever risk-free. The decision to accept Syrian refugee is no different – it is not risk free. […]
Tweet New York real estate developer being sued for $18 billion for accepting alleged proceeds of corruption from foreigners who were known PEPs According to an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, real estate developers in New York are being sued for accepting proceeds of corruption from politically exposed persons (PEP). The plaintiffs are […]