Ministers’ plans for reforming Britain’s gambling laws were in disarray on Wednesday as a rift emerged at the top of the Conservative party over whether to ban football shirt sponsorship and impose a levy to fund addiction services. Multiple sources said the process of putting the finishing touches to a white paper on gambling reform had driven a wedge between departments and senior MPs, with the publication deadline just weeks away. – Guardian
The government’s failure to tackle Russian kleptocrats laundering “dirty money” through the UK has led millions of pounds used to finance Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to flow through London, a powerful committee of MPs has warned. The commons foreign affairs committee said ministers’ complacency over “morally bankrupt billionaires using the UK as a safe deposit box” had led to “assets laundered through the UK … financing President Putin’s war in Ukraine”. – Guardian
Criminals are using deepfake video technology and stolen personal data to impersonate real people and apply for remote working jobs in the tech industry, the FBI has warned. The US law enforcement agency said it had received complaints about “voice spoofing” taking place during video interviews for remote workers, with the jobs being used to steal private information from corporate databases. – Telegraph
A cryptocurrency hedge fund set up by two former investment bankers has collapsed owing more than half a billion dollars. Three Arrows Capital entered liquidation on Wednesday after a British Virgin Islands court ruled in favour of creditors seeking repayment of debts. Shortly before its demise, the hedge fund had defaulted on a $674m loan, triggering creditors to seek its liquidation. – Telegraph
A City lawyer with 25 years’ experience, who ordered a client to “burn” a secure messaging system, told a judge he was unaware of the need to preserve evidence. Raymond McKeeve, formerly a partner at the law firm Jones Day, faces jail for contempt of court for advising an IT manager at a company set up by Jonathan Faiman, one of the founders of Ocado, to destroy messages to avoid them being handed over as part of a corporate espionage investigation. – The Times
