Compliance & Ethics

Australia's communications regulator has found that SBS breached gambling advertising rules during its broadcast of the Tour de France after airing a Crown advertisement that described the company as a "premier casino resort." At first glance, the advertisement appeared to sit comfortably within an exception that allows broadcasters to air promotions focused on dining and entertainment facilities at venues where gambling takes place. The commercial featured Crown's restaurants, entertainment offerings and accommodation.

The simultaneous arrival of a new capital-market authority, a rewritten companies law, and stricter governance and audit rules is transforming UAE corporate governance from a compliance exercise into a demonstrable system of control.

The federal government moved Thursday to extend core anti-money laundering controls to the stablecoin sector, proposing rules that would require permitted payment stablecoin issuers to verify the identities of their customers and maintain formal customer identification programs.

The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) said it has launched a market investigation into the country's motor insurance sector, a review that will be conducted jointly with insurance supervisor IVASS. The inquiry will examine whether parts of the market's structure (including risk classification systems, claims procedures and consumer switching mechanisms) are working as intended or creating obstacles to competition.

The U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security announced Wednesday that the German industrial giant agreed to pay a $36.18 million civil penalty to resolve allegations that it exported controlled items to Huawei Technologies Co. and its affiliates without the licenses required under U.S. export control rules. The settlement closes a case that stretched across four years and more than $72 million in transactions.

HSBC Bank has been ordered to pay a penalty of approximately $22.8 million (AUD $35 million) after admitting to serious failures in its handling of scam-related customer losses, in what Australian regulators described as one of the first enforcement actions of its kind globally. The penalty was imposed by the Federal Court on June 18 following proceedings brought by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

When Sweden's financial regulator published its latest assessment of money laundering, terrorist financing and sanctions risks on Thursday, the sectors drawing the most scrutiny were largely the same ones that appeared in previous editions, including banks, international payment services and crypto-assets.