March 20 - Credit Suisse announced on Sunday that it will be bought by its main rival, UBS, for $3.25 billion — a final, dramatic end to years of often-sordid scandals and financial problems at the 167-year-old institution. The story features a century-old rivalry including spying, as well as troubling links to dictators, cocaine, and money-laundering. The merger, brokered by three different Swiss regulators, comes on the heels of a tumultuous week for Credit Suisse, during which it saw its stock price plummet in reaction to the banking turmoil in the US, scrambled to secure a nearly $54 billion (50 billion Swiss Francs) loan from the Swiss National Bank, and saw doomsday prophecies being made about its future from people who have famously got it right before.

March 20 - Egypt’s national strategy to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism is a roadmap to protect Egypt’s financial and non-financial sectors from money laundering, terrorist financing, and arms proliferation, Chancellor Ahmed Saeed Khalil, head of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Unit, said. This will achieve financial stability, which will have a positive impact on supporting the Egyptian economy and achieving Sustainable Development Goals. This came in a speech delivered by Counselor Khalil on Sunday at the launch of the Unit for Combating Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism, the new phase of the National Strategy for Combating Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism, in the presence of members of the National Coordinating Committee in the field of Combating Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism, and heads and representatives of relevant national authorities.

March 18 - Our financial investigators seem to have a habit of sitting back and waiting for information to fall into their laps, as their inaction in various corruption cases will suggest. But to fail to act even when valuable information is available is callous at best, and collusive at worst. This is what happened after a Washington-based organisation in May last year reported the purchase of Dubai real estate by 459 Bangladeshi nationals, presumably with laundered money. But even after about 10 months have passed, and despite a High Court order issued on January 15 to investigate the matter, relevant agencies have failed to take action. This is quite disturbing.

March 16 - The Financial Transaction and Reporting Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) is engaged in a multi-year plan to implement important changes to its reporting forms as a result of regulatory amendments published in the Canada Gazette, Part II, in 2019, 2020 and 2022. FINTRAC published today its most recent implementation schedule for these changes.