October 16 - Convicted criminals and unlicensed agents are operating in the real estate sector across multiple states, a Guardian Australia investigation has found. In New South Wales, the Guardian has established that two individuals convicted of dishonesty offences have been allowed back into the industry well within the usual 10-year prohibition, and that gaps in the law mean convicted money launderers are able to find their way back into the industry.

October 16 - The recent US$3-billion settlement TD Bank Group reached with US regulators over money laundering oversight failures has exposed what experts see as Canada's comparatively lax approach to such violations, according to experts. Denis Meunier, former deputy director of Canada’s Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FINTRAC), believes that penalties in Canada are far too low to act as a true deterrent.

October 16 - On Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that TD Bank would become the largest bank to plead guilty to charges related to money laundering and that it would pay a landmark $3 billion in penalties spread across financial regulators. The amount of the fine was extraordinary, but in another respect, the TD case was like every other bank enforcement case: None of the executives responsible are going to jail, at least for now. This trend of banking executives being allowed to skate on criminal charges goes back decades, with perhaps the most famous example being the financial crisis of 2008, when the Feds sent a single mid-level Credit Suisse executive to jail.

October 15 - The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the intergovernmental organization that leads the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing, will decide whether to put Russia on its blacklist next week, according to a confidential document seen by POLITICO. The Paris-based body regularly evaluates countries according to their commitment to combatting money laundering, terrorism financing, and financing of proliferation of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. Being placed on a FATF black or gray list can severely damage a nation’s financial reputation and is seen as economically ruinous for most states.