Financial Crime Weekly Digest — 15–21 September 2026
Global enforcement actions, regulatory moves & intelligence from the world of AML & financial crime.
Author: SonarPulse
Author: SonarPulse
STR deadlines across the six: two count days, four use words
Every jurisdiction in this series requires a suspicious transaction report. Two of the six put a number on the deadline. The other four use words: promptly and directly in Saudi Arabia, without delay and directly under UAE federal law, which is what firms in…
Six jurisdictions, six answers to who counts as a politically exposed person
The texts in all six jurisdictions start from a similar idea: people who hold important public functions. Each then draws the edges differently: which relatives count, whether a domestic official is treated like a foreign one, and when senior management must…
Virtual assets: who licenses what, and where you can check
When a bank or payment firm is asked to bank a virtual asset service provider, the first question is simple: is this firm licensed, and by whom? We checked that question against the regulators' own documents. Some answers come with a public register. One…
UN sanctions across the six: the domestic lists and clocks behind the UN list
Each of our six jurisdictions implements UN targeted financial sanctions, and each also applies a domestic list alongside the UN list: for DIFC and ADGM, the UAE's federal one. Which list, which clock and who you tell afterwards are set locally. This is part…
Beneficial ownership across the six: where the line is drawn, and who may look at the register
Beneficial ownership is where customer due diligence meets company law. For an MLRO working across our six jurisdictions, two questions decide how much a register can do for you: where the ownership line is drawn, and whether you are allowed to look.
Financial Crime Weekly Digest — 8–14 September 2026
Global enforcement actions, regulatory moves & intelligence from the world of AML & financial crime.
Morocco after the grey list: the FIU, the supervisors and the offshore holding circular
On 24 February 2023 the FATF announced that Morocco was no longer subject to its increased monitoring process, the list often called the "grey list". The FATF said Morocco had met its action-plan commitments on the deficiencies identified in February 2021:…
UAE: two financial centres, two rulebooks, one set of federal AML laws
Two UAE financial free zones have their own financial regulators: the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), supervised by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), and Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), supervised by the Financial Services Regulatory…
Qatar: 24 hours or three working days, and how to tell which applies
In Qatar, the deadline for a suspicious transaction report (STR) depends on what you suspect. There are two time limits, and the first decision an MLRO makes is which one applies.
Start with a compliance health check.
A working session with your compliance team, then a walkthrough against your own risk appetite: the lifecycle end to end, scoring weights set to your policy, and a review of the audit trail the system produces.