by Giacomo Luca Aleo

On June 18, 2019 Facebook announced the birth of its own cryptocurrency: Libra, whose name is inspired by Roman unit of measurement, deriving from balance Latin name; the debut is expected for the first half of 2020. The announcement caused, on one hand, a general uproar and, on the other, the value increase of the other cryptocurrencies. The “Libra Association” (no-profit organization) will manage Libra. It currently counts 28 heterogeneous founding partners (with the goal of reaching 100), representing business giants: from Mastercard and Visa to operators of payment system (PayPal, PayU, Stripe), from telecommunications operators (Vodafone and Iliad) to consumer companies (including Booking, eBay, Spotify, Uber), from venture capital such as Andreessen Horowitz to a global exchange Coinbase. Managing Libra actually means manage the Libra Blockchain: it is a permissioned ledgers model, i.e. the management and the validation of transactions is prerogative of a single node, which – in this case – is collective and represented by the Libra Association. The blockchain will record the entire history of the transactions by replicating them in the node; therefore, the transactions will be transparent to all participants of the Libra Association.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission charged New York-based broker-dealer AOC Securities LLC, and its former chief executive officer, Ronaldo Gonzalez, with failing to supervise an AOC broker who provided inflated price quotes for certain securities to a significant customer of AOC. According to the SEC’s orders, Frank Dinucci Jr., a broker at AOC, provided inflated price quotes to a New York-based investment adviser, Premium Point Investments LP. 

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Following a request for assistance from Greece, rescEU assets have been mobilised to tackle forest fires ravaging several areas of Greece. As an immediate response, the European Union has already helped to mobilise 3 forest fighting planes from rescEU reserve from Italy and Spain to be dispatched swiftly to the affected regions. RescEU is the EU’s strengthened EU Civil Protection Mechanism, whose reserve includes firefighting planes and helicopters. Through rescEU, the EU reinforces its collective ability to respond to disasters that affect European countries. This is the first ever deployment of the rescEU assets.

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Following contested proceedings, the Upper Tribunal has found that Andrew Tinney, the former Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Barclays Wealth and Investment Management (Barclays Wealth), breached his obligation as an approved person to act with integrity.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against a Brooklyn individual and two entities under his control who allegedly engaged in a fraudulent scheme to sell digital securities to investors and to manipulate the market for those securities.  The court entered an emergency freeze to preserve at least $8 million of the $14.8 million the defendants raised in 2017 and 2018 in an offering of digital securities.
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The European Banking Authority (EBA) published clarifications to a fifth set of issues that had been raised by participants of its Working Group (WG) on APIs under PSD2. The clarifications respond to issues raised on the measurement of response times of the dedicated interface, the machine-readability of the EBA register, reliance on eIDAS certificates and various issues related to the contingency measures, including the identification of third party providers through ‘guest books’, the data that can be accessed and documentation.

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The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is consulting on a new framework code of practice for the use of personal data in political campaigning. The framework code will serve both as helpful guidance in its own right as well as having the potential to become a statutory code of practice if the relevant legislation is introduced. The framework code does not introduce new requirements for campaigners but seeks to explain and clarify data protection and electronic marketing laws as they already stand. It also seeks to provide practical guidance and useful examples on ways campaigners could comply with their obligations whilst carrying out common political campaigning activities.

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by Elina Karpacheva

Innovation is surely a good thing. FinTech makes access to finance fast, easy and accessible which is of great benefit to individuals, households and businesses. However, the increased speed of initiating transactions, the borderless movement of money flows, and anonymity may be exploited for ill-gotten gains. FinTech might be used for terrorist financing, money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, market abuse, and overall undermine the stability of financial system. From this angle, FinTech companies have enormous responsibility towards the society to prevent fraudulent behaviour. Governments around the world have started recognising risks associated with technologically enabled financial innovation. In effect, we see the increased level of regulation with enforcement against the FinTech being one of the priorities. The need of FinTech companies to establish compliance expertise to prevent, detect, and response to financial crime has become apparent. 
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