Good morning. Moscow’s Vnukovo airport is home to a sleek white Bombardier Global 7500—a $75 million Western-built jet that caters to the world’s wealthy and business elites.

• Jet-set lifestyle continues: The jet is one of a number of luxury aircraft used by close allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin—despite Western sanctions aimed at punishing Moscow’s elite over the 2022 Ukraine invasion. Sergey Chemezov, the chief executive at Russia’s giant defense company Rostec, has used the Bombardier jet for trips to Dubai, Turkey and Southeast Asia.
   
• Still going: Russia’s elite have been forced to adapt since the start of the war, but Western sanctions haven’t done much to crimp their globe-spanning lifestyles. They have traded places like London, the French Riviera and the Swiss Alps for new destinations like the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Azerbaijan.
   
• Still purchasing: A Wall Street Journal review of documents from an aviation research firm, import data and flight-tracking records show a number of wealthy Russians close to Putin continue to avail themselves of top-tier business jets from Western aviation companies. A web of companies buys the jets from Western manufacturers or second-hand and registers them in new locations to make them available to sanctioned Russians, the documents show. 
   
• What are Western companies to do? Companies based in North America and Europe are obliged under sanctions rules to ensure that no aircraft or aircraft parts are exported to Russia. They must conduct due diligence to determine whether clients subsequently resell such items to Russia, according to Felix Helmstädter, a German sanctions expert and lecturer in law at Humboldt University in Berlin. 

U.S. tells banks to watch for illegal workers.

Risk Journal reports: The U.S. Treasury Department has told banks to be on the lookout for workers illegally in the U.S. using their services, saying the activity poses a threat to the integrity of the financial system. (free link)

Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network on Friday told banks to file suspicious activity reports when they encounter transactions that might be related to unauthorized work.

Western Asset Management to pay $100 million over alleged trading fraud.

Western Asset Management agreed to pay a $100 million civil penalty to resolve U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission allegations the investment firm failed to stop its chief investment officer from engaging in a fraudulent trading scheme known as cherry-picking, Risk Journal reports. (free link)

What he did: Employees at Western Asset Management, also known as Wamco, allegedly knew about the trading activity but didn’t stop it, according to Friday’s enforcement action. The settlement was completed just as the former CIO, Kenneth Leech, is preparing for a related criminal trial set to begin June 15.

• The federal government’s long-awaited oversight measures for Anthropic’s Mythos, OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 and other frontier artificial-intelligence models are being met with a shrug by corporate cybersecurity chiefs.
   
• U.K. financial firms have made progress on sanctions compliance but are falling short on trade sanctions controls and failing to keep pace with evolving evasion techniques—that is the verdict of the Financial Conduct Authority following its review of sanctions systems across more than 150 firms since 2022. (free link)
   
• The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Ukraine Support Act on Thursday by 226 votes to 195, providing $8 billion in military assistance to Ukraine and imposing new sanctions on Russia—the first comprehensive Ukraine legislation to pass the House since 2024. (free link)
   
• A U.S. citizen who worked in China as a state-media journalist pleaded guilty to acting illegally as a Chinese government agent in the U.S., the latest in a series of prosecutions of Americans accused of secretly working for Beijing.
   
• The U.S. on Thursday sanctioned entities it says have supported “Marxist terrorist groups in the United States” as part of its latest and most sweeping action against Cuba’s leadership. (free link)
   
• South Korean authorities urged banks to step up measures against what they described as “speculative market-disrupting behavior,” after the won slumped to its weakest level since 2009 amid escalating Middle East tensions and speculation the Federal Reserve could raise rates by year-end.

Iran demands cash for peace. That’s a political minefield for Trump.

The U.S. and Iran have spent weeks struggling to forge a preliminary deal to end the war. One major reason why they are stuck: Tehran wants early access to cold, hard cash, and it is politically hazardous for President Trump to agree.

What are the issues? For Trump, a decision to free Iran’s assets upfront would inevitably generate comparisons to his own attacks on the Obama administration for flying cash into Tehran in the hours after the nuclear accord was implemented in January 2016. Trump vowed this spring to negotiate a “FAR BETTER” deal than that one, which he spent years lambasting and later pulled out of, partly because it provided cash to Tehran.

• Trump Tells Israel and Iran to Stop Exchanges of Fire
• Trump and Netanyahu’s Rift Over Lebanon Is Deepening

Hormuz crisis exposes a global flaw that will take years to fix.

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz demonstrated the weaponization of economic pinch-points, prompting governments to consider responses.

China has also leveraged its control over critical minerals and rare-earth supply chains to exert pressure on other countries. Building economic resilience will cost money and take years.

• OPEC, Allies Pledge Oil-Output Hike Even as Middle East War Chokes Exports

• Ukraine launched a mass drone attack on St. Petersburg a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech there rejecting a call for peace from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
   
• Chinese leader Xi Jinping will visit North Korea this week for his first foreign trip of the year, as he attempts to reassert Beijing’s authority over Pyongyang following Kim Jong Un’s embrace of Moscow.
   
• International businesses are abandoning Cuba, delivering another blow to the island’s collapsing economy as the Trump administration ratchets up pressure on Havana.
   
• The era of anything goes in private-credit underwriting is coming to an end.
   
• Mexico has largely responded with restraint to a pressure campaign from President Trump, absorbing tariffs, insults and threats of unilateral U.S. military action against drug cartels with little pushback. Now Mexico’s leaders are drawing a red line.
   
• Ireland is ending a three-year effective moratorium on new data centers, now requiring them to provide their own power sources.
   
• The U.S. faces an aging skilled workforce and rising demand, with Ford reporting a shortage of mechanics. Bloomberg Philanthropies is joining up with Ford in an effort to get more high-school students into skilled trades.
   
• Around 2,000 hospitality workers at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike, their union said Friday night. The stoppage could occur at any time, though union officials made it clear that the U.S. national team’s opening World Cup match against Paraguay on June 12 would be an opportune moment.
   
• A powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed at least 19 people and injured more than 130 in the southern Philippines on Monday as tremors collapsed buildings and ripped through roads.

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• Rancher Brian McClain orchestrated a $170 million “ghost herd” Ponzi scheme, attracting investors with promises of high profits from imaginary cattle. He died by suicide in April 2023 as authorities closed in, leading to suits and countersuits among his lender and investors.
   
• Melanie Walker, who worked for the Gates Foundation and in the billionaire’s private office, was a confidante to Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein. Her lawyer says she was in a