We have recently published the fourth edition of our Financial Crime and Compliance Report. With this report, we aimed to provide a comprehensive analysis and industry insights to combat global financial crime by consolidating critical information on emerging threats, regulations, and compliance processes worldwide, based on up-to-date data from industry leaders. In this post, we have consolidated the key points of our report to provide a general overview.
The Year in Review
2025 has been far from peaceful, due to factors such as numerous worldwide scandals and ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Despite the positive developments, the current state of the world has taken its toll on the financial crime and compliance landscape as well.
On the one hand, there have been illicit activities such as human trafficking and modern slavery that reached an estimated $498 billion, scam centers in Cambodia that generated $12.5–19 billion through more than 100,000 coerced workers, $750 billion that flowed through illegal transactions in Europe, and India’s fraud losses that tripled to ₹36,014 crore.
On the other hand, the use of AI by financial institutions has also become much more prevalent than in the previous year. According to the report, 73% of institutions have implemented AI in fraud detection, up from 49% in 2024. However, it has not been easy. The same year also witnessed a 72% spike in deepfake-related scams.
Behind the Borders: Crime, Conflict and Compliance
In this section of the report, we have analyzed how financial crime evolved across several jurisdictions in 2025, which includes detailed reports of several countries from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia.
In 2025, despite facing unprecedented levels of financial crime, the United States once more remained the global leader in enforcement.
This year witnessed the largest health-care fraud takedown in the U.S. history, which included 324 defendants (including 96 medical professionals), $14.6 billion in intended losses, and $4 billion blocked. The charges spanned a wide range of crimes, from opioid trafficking to exploitation of Native American and homeless communities.
In Europe, the EU announced a major AML overhaul: the establishment of Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) for direct supervision, a unified rulebook, new cash and ID check caps, and the expansion of obliged entities. In the UK, crypto legislation continued to be a top priority. The country updated custody and prudential rules, and reinvested £70.5 million in retained fines into AI-driven supervision. The UK Government’s draft legislation also signaled that crypto could become a part of mainstream finance in the following years.
AML in 2025
In this section, we examined the financial crime trends sector by sector. We documented that risk exposure is becoming increasingly diverse and fragmented due to the incidents in both traditional and digital sectors.
Financial Institutions: Regarding traditional financial institutions, penalties surged to a record $1.23 billion in the first half alone, which demonstrated the increasing strictness of regulators. Also, TD Bank’s $3 billion fine marked the largest AML penalty in the U.S. history.
Fintech: Fintechs continued to be considered high-risk due to the sector’s vulnerability to money laundering and terrorist financing. The difficulty that Fintechs face lies in the heavy regulatory burden. Moreover, the EU is also planning to issue additional EU guidelines to strengthen regulatory enforcement.
Real Estate: The real estate sector continued to be another critical focus for AML efforts. The U.S. passed new rules that mandate transparency in all-cash property transactions and European authorities increased scrutiny of cross-border property deals.
Health-care and Insurance: This year, health-care and insurance sectors have seen a considerable rise in scrutiny, as the biggest fraud takedown of recent years occurred in this domain. Cases like this show that their risk levels are no longer on the lower side.
Tariffs and Sanctions
In the fourth part, we explored the recent updates in sanctions regimes and trade-related controls. 2025 witnessed record fines for sanctions violations in both banking and digital asset sectors as well. According to sanctions experts, having a static sanctions compliance framework is no longer enough. Instead, institutions must adopt dynamic and intelligence-driven controls that anticipate shifts before they happen.
Military actions such as the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Gaza conflict, and renewed Iran sanctions have had a profound effect on sanctions imposed. There are also newly emerging regional sanctions blocs in the Gulf and Asia stemming from diverging U.S. and EU approaches.
Moreover, factors such as protectionism, shifting geopolitical alliances, and domestic economic pressures led to several changes in the tactics of key players such as the U.S., the EU, and China. These countries are now using sanctions as a tool for political influence and industrial control, in addition to economic objectives.
In 2026, we expect a rise in regulatory litigation, new ESG-linked sanctions, more digital border controls, and global supply chain reorientation. All of these require aligned compliance standards and up-to-date sanction monitoring in order to remain compliant.
Cryptocurrencies
Despite the severe regulations, cryptocurrencies continue to be used for illicit purposes. In this chapter, we focused on where crypto-related exposure is growing, how regulators are responding, and what compliance teams should prioritize in this environment.
In 2025, cyber financial crimes reached a new peak, which can be attributed to the largest crypto heist ever. North Korea’s Lazarus Group stole $1.5 billion in Ethereum from Dubai-based exchange ByBit in February 2025. This incident is a good example of how poor security measures and decentralized tools can be misused to fund cyber and weapons programs.
Another important case was the launch of Russia’s new stablecoin A7A5, which reached $1 billion in daily trading volume. This allowed Russia to continue trade after being cut off from SWIFT and hit with heavy western sanctions. The stablecoin is issued via Kyrgyzstan, which further reinforced the country’s image as a lax and crypto-friendly state.
In 2025, there have been many crypto crime takedowns in several countries such as Spain (where authorities arrested five individuals for laundering over $460 million), Canada (where authorities seized $56 million in illicit crypto), and the U.S. (where authorities seized $225.3 million). This regulatory scrutiny also led to a rise in the popularity of “crypto havens” such as Portugal, El Salvador, Malta, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and Gibraltar
When it comes to solutions, investing in AI while keeping human oversight, aligning with emerging regulatory frameworks, treating crypto as a mainstream financial risk, and strengthening governance and transparency remain among the best measures organizations can take.
Football, Gambling and Shadow Transactions
In the sixth section of our report, we investigated the increasing attractiveness of sports, online gambling, and shadow financial structures as channels for illicit transactions. Particularly, online gambling, hidden sponsorships, shell-backed clubs, and micro-betting platforms have become increasingly difficult to trace.
According to AML experts, micro-betting platforms allow high volumes of low-value transactions that are impossible to flag manually, which easily provides the perfect medium for smurfing and obscuring the true origin of funds. Let’s give an example to better illustrate the importance of staying vigilant against these risks.
This year, Star Entertainment faced an AU$400 million fine from AUSTRAC due to years of anti-money laundering failures tied to Chinese junket operator Sanctity Group, which was regarded as the most significant gambling AML enforcement action of the year.
This rising threat also led regulators to take relevant measures. Regulators from the UK and the EU to those in the Asia-Pacific region are increasing their scrutiny and issuing multi-million dollar fines. The upcoming revision of the EGBA’s AML guidelines will reinforce the urgency for proactive and risk-based compliance strategies across the gambling sector.
Therefore, we expect that there will be significantly higher scrutiny and deeper transparency requirements across the sports and gambling sectors in the following year. This will likely require businesses to invest in real-time monitoring, transaction-pattern analysis, a cross-sector risk perspective, and behavioral analytics.
Regional Fraud Hotspots
In this section, we mapped the regions where financial crime escalated most sharply in 2025 by consolidating data on scam centers, crypto laundering, sanctions evasion, and sector-specific fraud patterns.
We found that Cambodia and Myanmar are two of the most dangerous fraud hotspots of 2025. The fact that Cambodian scam centers alone generate more than $12.5 billion annually through more than 100,000 coerced workers backs this up.
Moreover, this year INTERPOL released a critical crime trend update warning that human trafficking-linked scam centers have gone global. The update indicated that, as of March, victims from 66 countries had been trafficked and 74% of whom were trafficked into Southeast Asia.
Another notable point we have observed is that China, India, and Pakistan are three of the main centers of call center fraud rings. It should be mentioned that these scammers improved their methods by implementing deepfake technology in order to impersonate officials.
While fraud centers can be found from all parts of the world, we advise that operations in these jurisdictions must be conducted with utmost vigilance. Businesses should also adopt geographic risk scoring, intelligence sharing practices, and real-time monitoring systems.
Strategic Roadmap for 2026
AI: The role of AI is rapidly shifting from being a supplementary tool to becoming a core part of AML and CTF efforts. According to sources at Worldef, AI use in the U.S. has hit the 10% adoption threshold, which indicates that it is at the beginning of mass-market acceleration. Since even fraud centers have been utilizing cutting-edge tech thoroughly, we expect governments, sectors, and firms will have to invest far more heavily in AI-driven compliance and cross-border oversight to fight financial crime.
Strengthened Global AML Harmonization: Due to the regulatory discrepancies between FATF guidance, EU AML directives, and national-level regimes, there are unfortunately several blind spots, particularly in cross-border transactions, crypto-asset oversight, and fintech licensing. Fortunately, there are several developments that appear on the horizon. The formal establishment of the European Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) is a good example of this, which will help close internal regulatory fragmentation and supervise high-risk cross-border entities.
