SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico: Puerto Rico’s fragile economy is facing an uncertain future after the island’s governor rejected a settlement announced late Sunday with bondholders that would reduce the US territory’s public debt by 70 percent.
The settlement is the biggest one to date since the island’s government announced in 2015 that it was unable to pay its more than $70 billion public debt load and filed for the largest US municipal bankruptcy in May 2017.
It’s unclear whether the deal will become final, with Gov. Wanda Vázquez saying it places too heavy a burden on the island’s retirees and noting that it still requires legislative approval. The deal also has to be approved by a federal judge overseeing a bankruptcy-like process for Puerto Rico.
“If the bondholders receive better treatment in the bankruptcy process, so should retirees,” she said. “This is an issue of basic justice.”
She said bondholders received new legal protections in amendments made to a September 2019 adjustment plan, but that retirees did not receive anything additional.
It’s the latest clash between Vázquez and a federal control board overseeing Puerto Rico’s finances, which reached the deal with several groups of bondholders to reduce the island’s bond debt from some $35 billion to roughly $11 billion.
Natalie Jaresko, the board’s executive director, said the island’s bankruptcy needs to be resolved.
“The new agreement is another step forward for Puerto Rico, one that gets the island much closer to ending bankruptcy and to the beginning of a true economic recovery,” she said in a statement.
Board members did not respond to the governor’s rejection of the settlement, and a board spokesman did not return a call for comment.
The announcement comes as Puerto Rico struggles to recover from Hurricane Maria, which hit as a Category 4 storm in 2017, and a series of strong earthquakes that have damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings along the island’s southern region.
Over the weekend, Puerto Rico government officials including Vázquez accused the board of delaying approval to release funds to help those affected by the quakes, accusations that the board denied in a letter earlier on Sunday before it announced the debt deal.
“Allegations that the...board has over 50 pending requests including for food, water and portable toilets are untrue,” it said. “None of the ten requests received were for portable toilets or water. All requests were processed within hours of receipt.”
Many have criticized Vázquez’s administration over its response to the 6.4 earthquake that killed one person on Jan. 7 as heavy aftershocks keep further damaging buildings.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rico economist José Caraballo told The Associated Press that he worries the deal could threaten basic government services and leave the island without sufficient funds to respond to the pending needs from the hurricane and earthquakes.
“The risk of a second bankruptcy and a prolonged recession is bigger than before,” he said.
Puerto Rico is mired in a 13-year recession, and roughly half a million people have left the island in the past decade, fleeing from the economic crisis and the aftermath of the hurricane and earthquakes.
Puerto Rico’s economy in limbo as governor rejects debt deal
https://arab.news/vjq79
Puerto Rico’s economy in limbo as governor rejects debt deal
- Gov. Wanda Vázquez says settlement places too heavy a burden on the island’s retirees and noting that it still requires legislative approval
- Puerto Rico filed for the largest US municipal bankruptcy in May 2017
Saudi-built AI takes on financial crime
- Mozn’s FOCAL reflects the Kingdom’s growing fintech ambitions
RIYADH: As financial institutions face increasingly complex threats from fraud and money laundering, technology companies are racing to build systems that can keep pace with evolving risks.
One such effort is FOCAL, an AI-powered compliance and fraud prevention platform developed by Riyadh-based enterprise artificial intelligence company Mozn.
Founded in 2017, Mozn was established with a focus on building AI technology tailored to regional market needs and regulatory environments. Over time, the company has expanded its reach beyond Saudi Arabia, developing advanced AI solutions used by financial institutions in multiple markets. It has also gained international recognition, including being listed among the World’s Top 250 Fintech Companies for the second consecutive year.
In January 2026, Mozn’s flagship product, FOCAL, was named a Category Leader in Chartis Research’s RiskTech Quadrant 2025 for both AML Transaction Monitoring and KYC (Know Your Customer) Data and Solutions, placing it among 10 companies globally to receive this designation.
Malik Alyousef, co-founder of Mozn and chief technology officer of FOCAL, told Arab News that the platform initially focused on core anti-money laundering functions when development began in 2018. These included customer screening, watchlists, and transaction monitoring to support counter-terrorism financing efforts and the detection of suspicious activity.
As financial crime tactics evolved, the platform expanded into fraud prevention. According to Alyousef, this shift introduced a more proactive model, beginning with device risk analysis and later incorporating tools such as device fingerprinting, behavioral biometrics, and transaction fraud detection.
More recently, FOCAL has moved toward platform convergence through its Financial Crime Intelligence layer, a vendor-neutral framework designed to bring together multiple systems into a single interface for investigation and reporting. The approach allows institutions to gain a consolidated view without replacing their existing technology infrastructure.
“Our architecture eliminates blind spots in financial crime detection. It gives institutions a complete view of the user journey, combining transactional and non-transactional behavioral data,” Alyousef said.
DID YOU KNOW?
• Some electronic money institutions using the platform have reported fraud reductions of up to 90 percent.
• The platform combines anti-money laundering and fraud prevention into a single financial crime intelligence system.
• FOCAL integrates with existing banking systems without requiring institutions to replace their technology stack.
Beyond its underlying architecture, Alyousef pointed to several areas where FOCAL aims to differentiate itself in a competitive market. One is its emphasis on proactive fraud prevention, which assesses risk throughout the customer lifecycle — from onboarding and login behavior to ongoing account activity — with the goal of stopping fraud before losses occur.
He described the platform as an “expert-led model,” highlighting the availability of on-the-ground support for system design, tuning, assessments, and continuous optimization throughout its use.
“FOCAL is designed to be extended,” Alyousef added, noting its adaptability and the ability for clients to customize schemas, rules, and data fields to match their business models and risk tolerance. This flexibility, he said, allows institutions to respond more quickly to emerging fraud patterns.
Alyousef also emphasized the importance of local context in the platform’s development.
“The platform incorporates regional regulatory requirements and language considerations. Global tools often struggle with local context, naming conventions and compliance nuances — we are designed specifically with these realities in mind,” he said.
FOCAL is currently used by a range of organizations, including traditional banks, digital banks, fintech firms, electronic money institutions, payment companies, and other financial service providers. Alyousef said results from live deployments have been significant, with some large EMI clients reporting fraud reductions of up to 90 percent.
“Clients benefit not only from reduced fraud losses but also from an improved customer experience, as the system minimizes unnecessary friction and false rejections,” he said. “Beyond financial services, we also work with organizations in e-commerce and telecommunications.”
Looking ahead, Alyousef said the company sees agentic AI as a key direction for the future of financial crime prevention, both in the region and globally. Mozn, he added, is investing heavily in this area to enhance investigative workflows and operational efficiency, building on the capabilities of its Financial Crime Intelligence layer.
“We are pioneers in introducing agentic AI for financial crime investigation and rule-building. Our roadmap increasingly emphasizes automation, advanced machine learning and AI-assisted workflows to improve investigator productivity and reduce false positives.”
As AI tools become more widely available, Alyousef warned that the risk of misuse by criminals is also increasing, raising the bar for defensive technologies.
“Our goal is to stay ahead of that curve and to contribute meaningfully to positioning Saudi Arabia and the region as globally competitive leaders in AI,” he said.
