Category: Analysis & Opinion

Regulatory Watch News

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  Treasury Targets Covert Hamas Investment Network and Finance Official

  US Treasury

  May 24, 2022

  WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated a Hamas finance official as well as an expansive network of three Hamas financial facilitators and six companies that have generated revenue for the terrorist group through the management of an international investment portfolio. Hamas’s Investment Office, whose leadership oversees this network, held assets estimated to be worth more than $500 million, including companies operating in Sudan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While Hamas’s Shura Council and Executive Committee exercise control and oversight of the group’s international investment portfolio, the Investment Office is in charge of the day-to-day management of this investment portfolio.

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  SEC Charges TradeZero America and Co-Founder with Deceiving Customers about Meme Stock Trading Halts

  SEC

  May 24, 2022

  The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged broker-dealer TradeZero America Inc., and its co-founder, Daniel Pipitone, with falsely stating to the firm’s customers that they didn’t restrict the customers’ purchases of meme stocks when in fact they did. In late January 2021, many brokers restricted investors’ ability to purchase a group of highly volatile stocks generally known as “meme stocks.” According to the SEC’s order, on January 28, 2021, TradeZero was instructed by its clearing broker not to allow its customers to purchase three meme stocks. TradeZero ultimately halted purchases for about 10 minutes. After the halt, TradeZero and Pipitone made misleading public statements via interviews, social media, and in a press release in an effort to distinguish their company from brokers that restricted trading during that period. For example, in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything,” Pipitone said, “That some trading firms are blocking these symbols is disgusting, unprecedented… Our clearing firm tried to make us block you and we refused.”

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  Israel’s progress in strengthening measures to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing

  FATF

  May 24, 2022

  24 May 2022 - Since the 2018 assessment of Israel's measures to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing, the country has taken a number of actions to strengthen its framework. In line with the FATF Procedures for mutual evaluations, the country has reported back to the FATF on the action it has taken since their mutual evaluation. Consequently, to reflect Israel's progress, the FATF has now re-rated the country on the following Recommendation: 16 - Wire transfers, from partially compliant to largely compliant The report also looks at whether Israel's measures meet the requirements of FATF Recommendations 2 and 15, which changed since their mutual evaluation. The FATF agreed to upgrade the rating of Recommendation 15 (New technologies), to largely compliant. Today, Israel is compliant on 16 Recommendations and largely compliant on 19.  It remains partially compliant on 4 Recommendations (one Recommendation is non-applicable to Israel). Israel will continue to report back to the FATF on its progress.