Cold War : The CIA Says it Blew up a Russian Gas Pipeline in 1982 with Canada’s Help – Fact or Fiction?

Tweet The true but untrue tale of spies, murder, economic warfare, and sanctions Introduction In 2004, a most unusual story appeared in a spy book written by a person named Thomas Reed (“Reed”), who worked at the US National Security Council. The unusual story was that the CIA blew up a Russian natural gas pipeline […]

Iran said to be officially moving into digital currencies with central bank

Tweet According to an article from Iran, summarized in CoinDesk, it seems that the Central Bank of Iran may have agreed to a policy of working with digital currency exchanges in Iran to provide the connective banking relationships to facilitate international transactions of the movement of digital currencies and money in and out of Iran. […]

Bitcoin advisor arrested for allegedly providing technical education on Blockchain to North Korea

Tweet Unsealed criminal complaint The US Attorney for the SDNY, together with the FBI yesterday announced the arrest of Virgil Griffith, a cryptocurrency advisor, in connection with technical services he allegedly provided to educate the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (“North Korea”) on sanctions avoidance and money laundering. Griffith was the subject of a criminal […]

Canadian digital currency exchange helps you buy a sanctions-avoidance virtual currency created by a Russian on a sanctions list, with ties to a $100M Ponzi scheme

Tweet Russian on OFAC list launches a coin The Kharon Brief has an interesting article here about Aleksei Muratov, also spelled Aleksey Muratov, a Ukrainian on the OFAC sanctions list here, who founded, launched and owns an initial coin offering called PRIZM. Donetsk People’s Republic Muratov lives in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. According to […]

Iranian president alleges nothing being done in Iran to investigate corruption by politically exposed govt officials

Tweet The president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, delivered a speech over the weekend in Iran alleging massive corruption by senior government officials, and claimed that over $700 million is gone that was under the control of the Minister of Petroleum, Bijan Namdar Zangeneh, and a further $2 billion is unaccounted for in foreign countries in […]

OFAC designates a judge and former state governor as Mexican cartel drug kingpins

Tweet Last week, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC“) designated several people associated with the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico, the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (meaning the new generation cartel of Jalisco), as drug kingpins. Added to the drug kingpin sanctions list is a Mexican Judge, Isidro Avelar Gutierrez, […]

Q & A on White House sanctions over technology from foreign adversaries

Tweet Last Wednesday, the White House issued an executive order (the “Order“) under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. 1701, the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1601, and §301 of Title 3 of the United States Code, prohibiting transactions of hardware, software or other products or services that enable information processing, data processing, data storage, data retrieval or electronic […]

France & Spain go after Syrian PEP, the Butcher of Hama’s $1 billion in unexplained wealth

Tweet Rifaat al-Assad, the uncle of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, is facing permanent asset forfeiture in France in connection with unexplained wealth and asset accumulation in France. He was charged in France last month with corruption, money laundering and embezzlement of state assets from Syria. He was ordered to remain in France. He is a politically […]

US seeks money laundering forfeiture of a large cargo ship citing sanctions and correspondent banking violations

Tweet The US government unsealed a federal forfeiture complaint this week, seeking in rem forfeiture of a cargo ship that was used for sanctions avoidance to benefit North Korea which used US correspondent banks to engage in sanctions avoidance. The case has no tie to the US except for the use of correspondent banks and […]