Foreign bribery cases rarely begin with a single, obvious act. They tend to surface through patterns, unusual secrecy, opaque ownership structures, and contracts that don’t quite add up. That reality is at the heart of new guidance released this week by the Serious Fraud Office and its Five Eyes law-enforcement partners.
The Saudi Central Bank has rolled out an updated Implementing Regulation of the Finance Companies Control Law, sharpening the rules that govern how finance companies operate across the Kingdom and folding several legacy frameworks into a more unified regulatory structure.
Australian fashion retailer City Beach has been ordered to pay about $9.4 million (AUD 14 million) in penalties after the Federal Court of Australia found it supplied tens of thousands of products that failed to meet mandatory button battery safety and information standards.
The Federal Trade Commission moved again this week to dismantle labor practices it says quietly box workers into lower pay and fewer options, ordering Adamas Amenity Services to stop enforcing no-hire agreements that regulators say restricted job mobility across New Jersey and New York City.
Poland’s competition watchdog closed out the year with a one-two punch that landed hard across two very different corners of the economy. Within 48 hours, the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) announced sweeping penalties for a decade-long cartel in the agricultural machinery market and for unlawful handling of mortgage payment holidays by two major banks.
Treasury officials brought banks and law enforcement into the same room this week with a message that Chinese money laundering networks remain a persistent and deeply embedded threat to the U.S. financial system and that disrupting them depends on tighter, faster coordination between the public and private sectors.
The Italian Competition Authority has fined Apple more than €98.6 million for abusing its dominant position through the design and implementation of its App Tracking Transparency policy, marking a significant competition-law ruling at the intersection of privacy and digital advertising.