Our monthly round up of news items which are of particular relevance to those businesses regulated for the purposes of AML.
Criminals lose, AML compliance wins, the smarter way to safeguard your business.
Cyber Security
The cost of crippling councils: Cyberattacks move from IT Headache to public-service crisis
Months after a major cyber incident, several London boroughs are still struggling to restore core services such as payments, certificates, and school applications. The disruption shows how local government attacks now translate directly into delayed services, financial stress for residents, and long recovery timelines.
Human and operational impact
Hammersmith & Fulham can finally process payments again, but there are backlogs, out-of-date balances, and long call waiting times as systems limp back to life after the incident.
Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea remain more severely affected: residents cannot order birth, death, or marriage certificates, key online forms are unavailable, and council tax direct debits are paused, leading to larger catch‑up bills later in the year.
The threats to public bodies
Kensington & Chelsea is the only borough to confirm criminal intent and data compromise, warning that full restoration may take months while it works with law enforcement and cyber agencies.
The borough reported blocking over 113,000 phishing attempts in just four months, while the NCSC has flagged UK councils as prime targets for pro‑Russia hacktivist campaigns that, although often unsophisticated, can cause major disruption to essential services.
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Organised Crime
How Cocaine networks are rewriting the Maritime playbook
A new Europol report exposes the rapid evolution of maritime cocaine trafficking, with criminal networks abandoning traditional container routes in favour of semi-submersibles, at-sea transfers, and deeply concealed cargoes that evade scanners and sniffer dogs. The shift is forcing law enforcement to rethink detection, risk profiling, and financial investigations.
Bypassing ports and moving offshore
Pressure on major European gateways such as Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Hamburg has triggered a “waterbed effect,” with traffickers relocating to smaller, less-monitored ports and, increasingly, bypassing commercial ports entirely through at-sea drop-offs and transfers.
Mother vessels departing Latin America now transfer multi-tonne cocaine loads to smaller “daughter” vessels, ranging from rigid-hulled inflatables (RHIBs) to fishing boats and speedboats, up to 100 nautical miles offshore, avoiding port controls and reducing reliance on corrupt insiders.
Semi-submersibles and deep concealment
Semi-submersible vessels capable of trans-Atlantic crossings are appearing with increasing frequency near the Azores and Galicia, with recent seizures including nearly 9 tonnes in a single Portuguese intercept, the largest cocaine haul ever made in the country.
Concealment methods have also evolved. Cocaine is now chemically bonded into carrier materials like frozen yucca powder or cowhides, hidden inside industrial machinery requiring full dismantling, or stored underwater in ship hulls and magnetic torpedo-like attachments, all designed to defeat traditional detection.
Financial crime and investigative challenges
At-sea operations sever the logistical and financial trail, replacing traceable invoices and shipping documents with cash, informal value transfer, and fragmented low-value transactions that complicate both customs risk profiling and AML investigations.
Criminal networks now control more of the supply chain by avoiding port facilitators, reducing costs and corruption exposure, but the shift also demands new investigative capabilities: maritime surveillance beyond commercial hubs, financial intelligence adapted to opaque maritime economies, and early forensic deployment to detect extraction labs in the EU.
Comment -For compliance teams, this diversification underscores how maritime logistics, non-commercial vessel ownership, small port activity, and Latin America–EU trade flows are all becoming higher-risk indicators, especially when linked to clients with fragmented ownership, cash-intensive operations, or unexplained coastal/river access.
Regulatory
Deutsche Bank raided ‘again’
German prosecutors have raided Deutsche Bank’s Frankfurt and Berlin offices as part of a money laundering investigation into suspected illicit transactions involving foreign entities and unknown employees. The timing just one day before the bank’s 2025 earnings were announced underscores how legacy compliance weaknesses can resurface, even years after headline enforcement actions.
What happened and what’s known
Frankfurt prosecutors targeted “unknown employees” and historical business relationships with foreign entities believed to have facilitated money laundering, though the nature, scale, and timeline of the suspected transactions have not been disclosed publicly.
Deutsche Bank confirmed cooperation with authorities but declined further comment, a familiar posture for an institution that has faced multiple AML-related penalties over the past decade, including $629 million in 2017 for control failures linked to a $10 billion Russian laundering scheme.
Pattern of enforcement and cultural risk
This is not an isolated event: Deutsche Bank has paid over $875 million in AML and market manipulation fines since 2017, with regulators in New York, the Federal Reserve, and UK authorities all citing systemic failures to maintain adequate financial crime controls.
The recurring nature of enforcement action suggests potential gaps in remediation effectiveness, inadequate change management following prior sanctions, or entrenched cultural issues where compliance remains secondary to commercial priorities, a risk profile that extends beyond Deutsche Bank to other complex, cross-border financial institutions.
Comment – Due diligence teams can learn from these patterns by embedding “enforcement intelligence” into their risk frameworks—tracking fines, sanctions, and enforcement trends across peer institutions and sectors to anticipate where regulators will focus next.
Leveraging external training and investigative support to identify correspondent banking failures, red flags in foreign entity structures, and building effective escalation cultures can help firms avoid becoming the next headline and demonstrate a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to financial crime risk. Find out more here.
