Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines has released a statement “rejecting” the findings of an OCCRP investigation published Wednesday, which uncovered how President Ashraf Ghani’s brother, Hashmat, secured a lucrative mining deal through a contractor with ties to the U.S. military.

The father-daughter duo who made millions selling shoplifted items, the dealer passing himself off as a famous MMA fighter, and drug shipments concealed in cupcake machines, sanitary pads and statues of the Holy Mother ─ the week in oddities, from us here at OCCRP.

The alleged mastermind behind the world’s longest running cryptocurrency money laundering operation was arrested in the United States on Wednesday, the Department of Justice announced.  

Wildlife trafficking is rampant on social media outlets where buying anything from elephant tusks to rhino horns, cheetah pelts, pangolin scales or other bits of poached endangered species can be as little as two clicks away, experts told the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources on Wednesday.

Italian authorities ordered on Tuesday the preventive detention of 15 suspected members of an international gang believed to have imported cocaine from South America in cooperation with the ‘Ndrangheta, one of Italy’s four major mafia groups.

Over half of the passports sold in Cyprus’ now-scrapped citizenship-for-investment scheme were granted illegally to people who did not qualify for naturalization and despite possible “conflicts of interest” attested in several cases, an official enquiry published on Tuesday has found.

Police in the Netherlands and in Poland arrested 30 people and seized 94 tons of tobacco and 5.4 million counterfeit cigarettes during an operation coordinated by Europol, the European police agency said on Wednesday.

Days after the leader of one of Colombia’s Indigenous leaders was murdered, a group of armed men opened fire and injured 32 members of the Indigenous Guard while the group was clearing illegal coca plants from their territory.

A court in Moscow suspended on Tuesday the activities of several organizations founded by the incarcerated top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, until it decides on a request by prosecutors to declare these organizations “extremist.”

Turkish authorities arrested 68 suspected members of a group accused of stealing over US$2 billion from investors through a cryptocurrency trading platform whose founder fled the country and is now on an Interpol wanted list.