Every week, compliance and financial crime teams across the world are working through new enforcement actions, new regulatory guidance, and new expectations. Most of it moves fast enough that it is easy to miss. Compliance Watch pulls together what actually matters from the past week, organized by region, so your team can walk into Monday already caught up.
Here is what happened last week.
Nigeria
Regulatory Updates
SEC’s digital asset rulemaking window closes as a new prudential regime takes shape
The public comment period on the SEC’s Proposed Rules on Digital and Virtual Asset Operations, Custody and Markets closed on September 3. The proposal, published August 20, would replace Nigeria’s lighter-touch VASP registration with a full prudential regime spanning six licence categories, digital asset exchanges, custodians, platform operators, offering platforms, real-world asset tokenisation platforms, and general VASPs. Notably, the ancillary VASP category with its ₦300 million capital floor has quietly dropped out of the draft. With comments now closed, firms operating in this space should expect the Commission to move toward finalized rules in the coming weeks.
AML/CFT & Financial Crime
EFCC keeps a steady drumbeat of arraignments over laundering and proceeds of crime
The EFCC arraigned Mahmud A. Abubakar before the FCT High Court in Abuja on September 2 over an alleged ₦1.09 billion in retained and transferred proceeds of criminal conduct, part of which passed through a personal Access Bank account before being moved to a third party. Two days later, on September 4, the EFCC’s Lagos Zonal Directorate arraigned Ali Bala and Yusuf Umar Anka before the Lagos State High Court over an alleged £110,000 and ₦500 million fraud, with a 10-count charge covering money laundering, stealing, and retention of stolen property. Both cases follow a pattern this year of laundering charges built around ordinary bank accounts rather than exotic structures, a reminder that account-level transaction monitoring remains the frontline defence.
Industry Developments
Digital assets and regtech converge around the same September deadlines
Nigeria’s digital asset oversight moved on two fronts in the same week. The CBN closed applications for the second cohort of its Regulatory Sandbox Programme on August 31, with a dedicated Virtual Asset Service Provider track covering stablecoins, custody, wallets, and payment and settlement services. Two days later, the SEC’s own digital asset rulemaking window closed. Taken together, the sandbox and the proposed prudential rules point toward a Nigerian digital asset market that will look considerably more supervised by year end than it does today, and institutions building or partnering in this space should be tracking both processes as they move toward finalization.
Other Regions
Regulatory Updates
ESAAMLG’s Senior Officials Meeting runs through the week as the FCA’s conduct rules take effect
ESAAMLG’s 52nd Task Force of Senior Officials Meeting ran from August 31 through September 4, bringing regional AML/CFT supervisors together for technical review that typically shapes mutual evaluation and follow-up priorities across Eastern and Southern Africa.
In the UK, the FCA’s new non-financial misconduct rules took effect on September 1. The rules explicitly link conduct such as bullying and harassment to fitness and propriety assessments, a change with direct relevance for compliance leadership, since it widens what counts as a red flag in senior manager and certification regime reviews.
AML/CFT & Financial Crime
OFAC closes out the week with designations across three sanctions programs
OFAC stayed active through the week. On September 2, the agency issued a reminder to file the 2026 Annual Report of Blocked Property alongside amended Venezuela-related general licenses. On September 3, it added Cuba-related designations and removed a Russia-related designation. On September 4, it issued fresh Iran-related designations alongside an amended general license. For institutions screening against US sanctions lists, three separate list updates in one week is a reminder that a weekly refresh cycle is no longer fast enough to stay current.
What Compliance Teams Should Know
The throughline across every region this week is the same. Regulators are not asking institutions to simply have a policy. They are asking institutions to prove the policy works, in real time, against real activity. Ordinary bank accounts still carry the bulk of Nigeria’s laundering cases, sanctions lists are moving faster than a weekly check can keep up with, and Nigeria’s two main financial regulators are converging on digital assets at the same time. Compliance infrastructure needs to keep pace with how fast risk actually moves.
If your team is still reconciling screening lists manually or working out how the SEC’s proposed digital asset rules will affect your onboarding flow, that is worth a conversation. Reach out to Probe at probecompliance.com/contact to see how institutions across Nigeria, Africa, and the UK are closing that gap.
Compliance Watch is a weekly roundup from Probe Compliance covering regulatory updates, AML/CFT and financial crime, and industry developments across Nigeria, Africa, Europe, and the rest of the world. Check back next week for the latest.