Cross-border payments power the global economy, but they also create opportunities for financial crime. Explore key areas of exposure and how leading institutions are gaining greater visibility into the payment chain.

Explore this month’s Sanctions and Export Controls Update, highlighting IFI’s take on key developments from August 2026.

Explore this month’s Sanctions and Export Controls Update, highlighting IFI’s take on key developments from May 2026.

Explore this month’s Sanctions and Export Controls Update, highlighting IFI’s take on key developments from February 2026.

2025 will go down as a historic year for AML/CFT and sanctions-related enforcement actions in two ways. It’s the first time in over 20 years that no banks have faced major penalties, and state regulators began jointly penalizing institutions.

Explore the convergence of illicit finance domains through real-life examples including Russia’s procurement of drone components, Iran’s evasion networks, and China’s acquisition of restricted chips.

Iran’s shadow banking system has laundered billions of dollars for the regime. In this article, we detail how the system works and how financial institutions can identify red flags associated with Iran’s oil smuggling and concealed payment networks.

Explore this month’s Sanctions and Export Controls Update, highlighting IFI’s take on key developments from the U.S., EU and UK in April 2025.

Ever wonder how export controls, sanctions, and proliferation finance differ—and why it matters? This article breaks down these essential tools, explains their unique purposes, and highlights how they often overlap in the real world.

In today’s fast-evolving regulatory landscape, sanctions compliance can feel like an uphill battle. This guide explores the key challenges compliance officers face—ranging from multi-jurisdictional rules to cryptocurrency complexities—and offers practical tips to stay ahead.

Explore the highlights from our recent webinar including an overview of the current illicit finance landscape, major events in 2024 as well as noted possible future developments as the global illicit finance regime grows and evolves.

It’s more important than ever for compliance officers to understand and recognize sanctions evasion typologies. In this article, we explore six of the most common techniques illicit actors use to evade sanctions.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) five years ago published its Framework for OFAC Compliance Commitments. This guidance remains the most comprehensive articulation of OFAC’s compliance expectations to date. Although it notably stopped short of mandating a sanctions compliance program (SCP), recent enforcement actions demonstrate the implications of not having an SCP in place.

The U.S. Treasury recently identified proliferation networks operating on behalf of Russia, North Korea, China, Iran, Syria, and Pakistan as threats to U.S. national security. These networks exploited the U.S. financial system to finance the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including financing to procure WMD components and raising revenues to support efforts by these state actors to advance their WMD activities.

When conducting customer due diligence and enhanced due diligence, simple screening for names that may be on sanctions lists is no longer sufficient given the increasing complexity of Russia’s sanctions evasion efforts and the volatile regulatory environment because of Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine. Extra research is necessary to ensure compliance with sanctions laws and adherence with your company’s own risk policies. This research, however, can be complex, and structured analytic techniques and tools are necessary for effective due diligence. 

With the onset of stringent sanctions against Russia in 2022, US officials and financial analysts began to speculate about the potential for cryptocurrencies to serve as a means for evasion. But can virtual assets enables a nation's efforts to evade sanctions?

OFAC in 2023 reached settlements with 17 companies, collecting more than $1.5 billion in penalties. Mitigating factors can help reduce the severity of penalties imposed by OFAC for sanctions violations and often involve significant remedial measures and enhancements to a company’s sanctions compliance program.