Serbian businessman Stanko Subotić is suing the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, its publisher Drew Sullivan, and Dragana Pećo, a reporter from its Serbian partner KRIK, claiming they are part of a media campaign against him orchestrated by the secret service and the mafia, OCCRP announced Friday.

Human Rights Watch urged on Wednesday the United Nations to do something about the deteriorating human rights situation in the Philippines after government forces killed nine human rights defenders claiming they were communists.

The U.K. government agreed with Nigeria on Tuesday to return £4.2 million (US$5.83 million) laundered by James Ibori, the former Governor of the southern oil producing Delta State, which government officials say will be used to finance key Nigerian infrastructure projects.

U.S. authorities will impose new anti-money laundering rules on the art and antiquity market which is believed to have been frequently used for concealing the origins of illegally obtained money and even for terror financing. 

Experts have warned that Romania’s new system for monitoring illegal logging in the country ― itself an industry worth US$1 billion per annum, propped up by corruption and organized crime ― is falling seriously short of legally-mandated transparency requirements.

Serbia’s pro-government media launched a coordinated smear campaign against reporters of the investigative outlet KRIK on Tuesday, linking them to a recently arrested crime boss the same reporters investigated and determined to have frequently socialized with the president’s son.

Brazil’s highest court has annulled all convictions against former Brazilian president Luis Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva, paving the way for the popular leftist leader to run against President Jair Bolsonaro in next year’s presidential elections.

Police in the Czech Republic on Monday announced efforts to indict alleged members of a U.K.-based organized crime group accused of stealing 1.4 billion Krona (US$63 million) by defrauding two banks and an insurance company at least 21 times.

The United Nations kicked off its 14th Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Kyoto, Japan on Saturday, with experts expressing concern about the COVID-19 pandemic and the new opportunities it has created for organized crime.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday announced that it has re-imposed economic sanctions on an Israeli billionaire, accused of “extensive” public corruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo, after the Trump administration lifted them in its final days in office.