Compliance & Ethics

The U.S. Treasury is intensifying its effort to choke off any remaining financial lifelines available to sanctioned Russian elites, and American firms are increasingly in the crosshairs. This week, the Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) unveiled two separate enforcement actions totaling more than $18 million, signaling that even indirect or obscured connections to Kremlin-aligned wealth will draw scrutiny.

South Korea’s data protection watchdog says Starbucks and its third-party auditor mishandled workers’ personal data and now both companies are being ordered to fix it. The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) resolved to issue correction orders and compliance recommendations to Starbucks Corporation and Elevate Hong Kong Holdings Limited, following a probe into how the two handled personal information linked to Starbucks’ Ethical Sourcing Program in Korea.

South Korea’s competition regulator has fined Webzen for misleading players about the chances of winning rare items in its hit mobile game MU Archangel. The Commission, chaired by Biung-ghi Ju, announced that Webzen will face a corrective order and administrative surcharges totaling KRW 1.58 billion (about USD $1.2 million) for using what officials described as deceptive practices tied to in-game “loot boxes.”

America’s largest apartment manager is being forced to clean up how it markets rent to prospective tenants. Greystar has agreed to pay $24 million and end what regulators call a pattern of hiding unavoidable monthly fees behind deceptively low rent ads. The resolution follows a joint lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and the State of Colorado, which accused the real estate giant of luring renters in with prices that didn’t reflect what they would actually pay to live in its properties.

After years of warnings that corruption too easily slips through cracks between national legal systems, EU lawmakers have reached a political deal to tighten the net. On Tuesday night, negotiators from the European Parliament and Council agreed on the Union’s first directive to harmonise criminal laws against corruption, a milestone many in Brussels say is overdue.

Europe wants deeper capital markets, more private investment, and a financial system that can compete globally. But one of the bloc’s leading regulators is warning that the EU is trying to build that future on an outdated supervisory map.

Australia’s financial watchdog is tightening expectations for industry codes of conduct, making clear that if banks, insurers, lenders, or investment firms want to claim their codes are “ASIC-approved,” they’ll need to prove those codes actually work for consumers.