Sanctions

Yuri Kovalchuk, with vast holdings in banking and media, is helping his longtime friend Vladimir Putin tighten the Kremlin’s grip on the internet. Read the full story here.

The web of shell companies and middlemen managed by services firm Bridgewaters makes it hard for authorities to track assets and enforce sanctions. The company has connections to now-blacklisted oligarchs including Alisher Usmanov, Andrei Skoch and Sergei Chemezov. Read the full story here.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said sanctions would “impose massive costs on Putin’s closest confidants.” In reality, the impact is far milder. Read the full story here.

Federal authorities indicted Kassim Tajideen, an alleged terror financier whose family businesses engaged in commodity deals for years with an iconic American food producer. Read the full story here.

Annie Murray’s 2009 Land Cruiser followed the same overseas car caravan that U.S. officials alleged raised millions of dollars for Hezbollah–a trade route they thought they had cleaned up five years ago. Read the full story here.

U.S. companies are barred from doing business with people and entities named on the government’s designated-terrorist list. The firm that touts the Butterball turkey is being investigated over such alleged ties. Read the full story here.

Some terrorist financiers blacklisted by the U.S. government continue to raise money and attract followers on U.S.-based social media, a new report says. Read the full story here.

The Government Accountability Office has launched an inquiry into the effects of banks’ increasing efforts to close high-risk accounts, including those held by money-transfer firms and humanitarian organizations. Read the full story here.

Banks close the accounts of customers they fear may be up to no good, evicting from the financial system those the government most wants to watch. Read the full story here.