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
ICPC and NFIU stocktake financial intelligence outcomes ahead of Nigeria’s FATF re-evaluation
The ICPC and NFIU opened a three-day stocktake meeting in Abuja this week to assess how effectively financial intelligence is being converted into prosecutions and asset recovery, held in direct preparation for Nigeria’s upcoming FATF 3rd Round Mutual Evaluation. The ICPC Chairman noted that the commission now makes parallel financial investigations mandatory in every corruption case it handles and leans on the Corporate Affairs Commission’s Beneficial Ownership Register to expose corporate shells, while stressing that technical compliance alone will not secure a strong rating. The message for institutions is the same one regulators keep repeating: demonstrable, measurable enforcement outcomes are what evaluators and supervisors are actually looking for, not policy documents.
South Africa
AML/CFT & Financial Crime
Six alleged Black Axe members extradited to the US over a $6.2 million romance scam, as Capitec draws an AML fine
South African police extradited six Nigerian nationals to the United States this week over their alleged involvement in an organised romance scam and cyberfraud operation linked to the Black Axe network, accused of defrauding more than 100 American women, mostly businesspeople and pensioners, of over $6.2 million through wire fraud and money laundering. In a separate action, South Africa’s Prudential Authority fined Capitec Bank roughly £1.2 million following an inspection under the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, citing shortcomings in customer due diligence, enhanced and ongoing due diligence, staff training, and elements of the bank’s broader compliance framework. Together, the two actions show South African authorities working both ends of financial crime at once, cross-border organised fraud on one side and domestic institutional compliance on the other.
United Kingdom
Regulatory Updates
A three-year AML strategy promises a “step change” in enforcement
The UK government unveiled a new three-year anti-money laundering strategy this week, pledging a significant step up in enforcement and committing to recruit 500 additional police officers dedicated to tackling dirty money.
AML/CFT & Financial Crime
The FCA opens an AML investigation and moves against unregistered crypto trading in London
The FCA opened a formal investigation into Euro Exchange Securities UK Ltd this week over suspected breaches of the Money Laundering Regulations spanning February 2020 to June 2026, examining shortcomings across risk assessment, customer due diligence, ongoing monitoring, governance, and reporting. In a separate action, the FCA joined HMRC and the Metropolitan Police in targeting three London premises suspected of running unregistered peer-to-peer crypto trading, issuing cease-and-desist letters and warning that unregistered crypto businesses give criminals a route to move and launder funds outside regulated controls. Taken together with the new national strategy, it is one of the clearest signals yet that UK authorities intend to move from strategy documents to visible, resourced enforcement.
Europe
AML/CFT & Financial Crime
A Frankfurt court holds Meta liable for scam ads run on Facebook and Instagram
A Frankfurt court ruled this week that Meta is liable for fraudulent advertisements and fake profiles run on Facebook and Instagram, finding that the platform’s algorithms gave it enough control over the content that it could not rely on the Digital Services Act’s hosting-liability exemption. It is a significant decision for how platforms are held accountable for scam content circulating on their networks, and one likely to influence how regulators elsewhere approach platform liability for financial fraud.
Global
AML/CFT & Financial Crime
US lawmakers push for sanctions on the Southeast Asian scam centres behind “pig butchering” fraud
US lawmakers pushed this week for sanctions against operators of Southeast Asian scam centres, the organised compounds behind much of the “pig butchering” investment fraud now hitting victims globally. The push reflects growing recognition that this fraud typology has scaled into an industrial, cross-border operation that ordinary AML controls at the receiving end were never designed to catch alone.
What This Means for Your Compliance Program
The throughline across this week’s updates is that financial crime enforcement is widening its aperture. Regulators are no longer only looking at banks, they are looking at social platforms that host scam ads, at scam compounds operating across borders, and at whether institutions can demonstrate real outcomes rather than paper compliance. Nigeria’s ICPC and NFIU are being pushed toward measurable results ahead of a major evaluation, cross-border fraud networks are being dismantled through international cooperation, and the UK is putting real resourcing behind its enforcement ambitions. The institutions that stay ahead of this are the ones treating fraud, AML, and platform-level risk as one connected problem rather than three separate ones.
If your team wants a second look at how your due diligence and monitoring controls would hold up under this kind of scrutiny, that is worth a conversation. Reach out to Probe Compliance at probecompliance.com/contact to see how institutions across Nigeria, the UK, Africa, and the rest of the world are closing that gap.
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.