Russia’s lower house of Parliament approved Tuesday the third reading of a draft law aiming to increase the country’s sovereignty over its internet and defend against foreign cyber attacks, the State Duma confirmed in a tweet.
An internal investigation found that Deutsche Bank may have breached anti-corruption regulations through its involvement in money laundering and that it could face penalties, while its senior management could risk prosecution.
Alabama lawmakers shelved last week a new bill that would have eliminated the current ban on public officials receiving gifts and reduce the penalties for low-level bribery convictions to misdemeanors.
The Peruvian government published last week a decree restoring the independence of OSINFOR, its agency in charge of combating illegal logging in the Peruvian Amazon, reversing a decision from a few months ago that had placed the organization under ministerial control.
A company owned by a Lithuanian businessman who allegedly was part of a network that laundered money looted by the dictator of Equatorial Guinea has donated funds for the construction of the third highest church in Russia that will serve as the principal temple of Russia’s armed forces.
Estonian authorities re-launched a 2013 investigation to see how much of the money suspected of having been laundered through Danske and Swedbank is tied to the infamous Magnitsky affair.
Citing money-laundering scandals such as the ‘Global Laundromat,’ the ‘Azerbaijani Laundromat’ and the ‘Troika Laundromat’ the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has urged swift and substantial action to strengthen anti-money laundering provisions and improve international cooperation in the fight against such ‘laundromats.’
In the twenty years since the small, post-Soviet nation of Georgia joined the Council of Europe, and thirty years since Soviet troops violently suppressed civilian protests there, the country has made significant progress towards democracy, but continues to require improvement in areas such as constitutional reforms, human rights and respect of the rule of law.
A scandal in Bulgaria dubbed #FlatGate has widened over the past week, with two more top officials resigning after reporters revealed they obtained spacious apartments in downtown Sofia for far below market rates.
The Council of the European Union granted its final approval Tuesday to a proposal to establish a European Criminal Records Information System on Third Country Nationals (ECRIS-TCN), or convicted non-EU citizens, to aid in the exchange of criminal records information, the European Commission (EC) announced in a press release.