Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, cybercrime has grown more than any other criminal activity, a Europol report revealed on Friday. 

Two Italian businessmen accused of fraud have obtained state contracts for the supply of protective equipment to public authorities amid the crisis caused by the spread of COVID-19 in the country, IrpiMedia reported on Thursday. 

Belgian authorities working in partnership with Europol have convicted four suspects as part of an ongoing international probe into a paedophile ring that abused children just a few months old. 

The best-paid lobbyist behind Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic Games bid reportedly said he gave expensive gifts to an eminent member of the International Olympic Committee who is currently facing trial for corruption in France.

Twitter decided on Thursday to delete some 20,000 fake accounts linked to the governments of several countries - including more than 8,000 to the one in Serbia - stressing that their activity violated Twitter’s policies in constituting a “targeted attempt to undermine the public conversation.”

The US government paid a company US$13.8 million five years ago to develop a cheap version of a ventilator that could be used to confront a pandemic, yet none will be added to the national stockpile any time soon. The company is supposed to deliver them by 2022 and is meanwhile busy selling ventilators abroad at higher rates, Propublica reported this week.

Authorities in Mexico have frozen several financial accounts that may have been used by the notorious Sinaloa Cartel to launder drug money.

Montenegro’s government extended on Friday the public debate period on controversial access to information legislation, allowing suggestions to be emailed for another 10 days, a statement from the Ministry of Public Administration said.

After years of scrutiny, Steve Green, the Chairman of the Washington-Based Museum of the Bible, has announced that he will be returning some 11,500 antiquities from his personal collection to Egypt and Iraq, admitting that some of them may have had dubious provenance.

In the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Corruption Watch, South Africa’s Transparency International’s chapter, issued its 2019 annual report on Tuesday, warning that many lives will be lost in the country now, “as a direct consequence of corruption.”