Press
Showing 1-20 of 39 Items
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China Fires Back at U.S. Sanctions
Why it matters: The sanctions expand on Beijing's previous efforts to criminalize certain kinds of research, intimidate individual researchers, and make it harder for companie...
By Alex Zerden
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Is Cryptocurrency Enabling Hamas? Efforts to Halt Terror Funding Revive.
“It’s a space of finite resources and constantly changing prioritization,” says Alex Zerden, a terror-financing expert formerly at the U.S. Treasury and now head of his own ri...
By Alex Zerden
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Binance Penalties Include a Number of Crypto Industry Firsts
The CFTC also imposed charges and fines against Binance’s former chief compliance officer, Samuel Lim, an action a CFTC commissioner said should serve as a message to the cryp...
By Alex Zerden
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New Binance CEO Teng’s First Job Is to Avert Customer Exodus
Binance exploded onto the crypto scene in 2017 and saw its market share surge to more than 60% worldwide after the fall of FTX in November 2022. Since then, its combined marke...
By Alex Zerden
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Is Crypto Financing Terrorism?
Alex Zerden, founder of the risk advisory firm Capitol Peak Strategies and a former official at the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, told DealBook th...
By Alex Zerden
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U.S. Targets Crypto Mixers Over Money Laundering Risks
FinCEN’s proposal could have a chilling effect by further associating certain crypto activities with terrorist financing and money laundering, according to Alex Zerden, a form...
By Alex Zerden
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How the West—and Israel Itself—Inadvertently Funded Hamas
The flow of money illustrates the conundrum Israel and the West have faced since 2007, when Hamas wrested control of the strip from its rival, the internationally recognized P...
By Alex Zerden
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U.S. Hits Hamas Financiers With Sanctions in Response to Israel Attack
“The practical effect of this is that it makes it almost impossible for these individuals and entities to interact with the U.S. financial system, and by virtue of that, with ...
By Alex Zerden
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China Data Brokers Find Opportunity amid Growing Restrictions
Open-source intelligence companies are seeing a business opportunity amid rising demand for China-related business and economic data. "Private-sector actors are increasingly r...
By Alex Zerden
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Taliban Sell Afghanistan's Mines Despite Sanctions
“U.S. sanctions generally require U.S. persons and some foreign persons to comply,” said Alex Zerden, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “A foreign company co...
By Alex Zerden
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Binance Feels Strain of World’s Regulators Leaping Into Action
“The operating environment is going to be more difficult for entities that want to operate in an undefined regulatory location,” said Yaya Fanusie, director of policy for AML ...
By Yaya J. Fanusie & Alex Zerden
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DeFi Needs to Comply With Anti-Money Laundering Rules, US Treasury Says
Alex Zerden, a former Treasury official who advises cryptocurrency firms on their illicit-finance risks, said that while the broader regulation of digital assets remains a div...
By Alex Zerden
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U.S. Treasury’s Updated Sanctions Strategy Against Russia
Last Tuesday at the Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. Treasury Department Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo laid out the Biden Administration’s updated strategy for using sancti...
By Alex Zerden
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Sanctions on Russian Bank Raise Questions About ‘sanctions-proofing’ in Gulf
Rachel Ziemba, a sanctions expert at the Center for a New American Security, told Middle East Eye the bank was “ahead of the curve" in establishing itself in the UAE, to take ...
By Alex Zerden & Rachel Ziemba
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Global Financial Watchdog Suspends Russia’s Membership
“The measure is both an important political statement as well as a recognition of the threats to the global financial system posed by Russia. The FATF identified Russia’s invo...
By Alex Zerden
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Frozen Afghan Funds Have Done Little to Sway Taliban
The U.S. has stepped up use of economic sanctions and asset seizures in the past two years as a foreign-policy mechanism against Afghanistan as well as Russia. In the case of ...
By Alex Zerden
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New Cryptocurrency Unlikely to Help Russia and Iran Evade Sanctions
It appears that Russia now sees cryptocurrency as a tool for engaging in bilateral trade with Iran, and a way to pay for those drones. By January 2023, the Russian news agency...
By Alex Zerden
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How a Prominent Russian Oligarch Helped Start America’s Cannabis Industry
In addition to Abramovich’s direct funding of Curaleaf, the records show he lent about $84 million to Curaleaf’s largest shareholder, Andrey Blokh, and its chairman, Boris Jor...
By Alex Zerden
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U.S. Treasury Seeks Comment on Crypto’s Illicit Finance Risks
Various stakeholders, including crypto industry advocates, members of civil society, traditional financial institutions and crypto firms, are expected to provide comments, acc...
By Alex Zerden
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U.S. to Transfer Afghan Funds to Swiss Bank for Safekeeping
The Biden administration hopes availability of the funds for such critical foreign currency payments can help ease the economic suffering of the Afghan population and potentia...
By Alex Zerden