Artificial intelligence is reshaping finance – and not always for the better. Imagine being denied a bank account with no explanation at all. No suspicious transactions, no fraud history, no sanctions – just a silent refusal. This is increasingly the reality for entrepreneurs from emerging markets who try to move money or invest across borders.

Behind the compliance curtain

Compliance departments at international banks are allowed to refuse service without explanation. What was once seen as a prudent safeguard has turned into a major barrier, especially for cross‑border transactions.

Aggregator services such as Refinitiv’s World‑Check, LexisNexis WorldCompliance and Dow Jones Risk & Compliance collect and store huge amounts of personal data on individuals and their companies. In theory, this information helps banks comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti‑money‑laundering (AML) rules.

In practice, much of this data is scraped automatically from the internet – from official registers and news articles that are far from always reliable. Automated crawlers harvest this content into databases that human compliance staff rarely verify in detail. The result is classic “garbage in, garbage out” – except here that garbage can cut legitimate businesspeople off from the global financial system.

How fake media feed the machines

A key source of bad data are fake news websites – “kompromat sites”, as they are known in the post‑Soviet space and Eastern Europe. Competitors, disgruntled former partners or professional blackmailers can easily plant fabricated stories about entrepreneurs.

This practice has grown into a sizeable business built on hundreds of smear sites whose claims are not backed by any credible evidence. Taking them to court or forcing them to remove falsehoods is extremely difficult: ownership is opaque, and the same material is mirrored across networks of interconnected domains.

These sites are not hard to spot once you know what to look for. They usually do not disclose a legal entity or proper contact details for journalists. They have little or no genuine presence on social media – an anachronism for any real media outlet. Often there is only a generic email address, used to negotiate the publication of kompromat or the paid removal of damaging material.

Mimicking real news outlets

The most sophisticated fake media masquerade as local news outlets for specific countries. The Trinity Bugle (www.trinitybugle.com) presents itself as a news source for Irish expats in Cyprus, the Warsaw Point (www.warsawpoint.com) focuses on Polish culture, and MICE Times (www.micetimes.asia) promises “fresh, independent news and views” from Singapore and Bangkok. Similar sources can be found in other places as well as, including Leeds TV (www.lstv.co.uk) and the Chicago Morning Star (www.chicagomorningstar.com).

Despite their stated niches, these portals regularly run hit pieces on businesspeople from post‑Soviet states. To look legitimate, they reprint large amounts of real agency copy, sometimes with light editing. They list fake media partners, invent non‑existent reporters and decorate them with fabricated bios and stock photos grabbed from the web.

Some of these sites are linked to Kazakhstan (www.kiar.center, www.zagranburo.org), Ukraine (First Truth & Transparency Committee – www.fttc.com.au,www.sokalinfo.com) or Russia (www.ossetia.tv, www.compro-site.com). Others publish in English and pose as investigative platforms, such as www.oligarchsinsider.com or www.opensourceinvestigations.com.

AI as a risk amplifier

Generative AI is making this ecosystem even more dangerous. Increasingly, disinformation is created or amplified by automated tools. As compliance departments lean more heavily on AI to speed up risk assessments, a vicious circle forms: AI‑generated disinformation flows into AI‑driven compliance tools, which then replicate and reinforce these errors at machine speed.

Compliance is now facing a crisis of trust. In a world where artificial intelligence magnifies mistakes and fake media keep feeding the machines, vigilance is no longer optional – it is a condition for survival. There is only one way forward: entrepreneurs and companies must constantly monitor their digital footprint, and bank compliance officers must resist the temptation to rely blindly on automated systems.