Italian police have captured a senior member of the Camorra organized crime group after a 15-year manhunt, officials announced Tuesday.

A former Venezuelan national treasurer was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Tuesday after pleading guilty to receiving over US$1 billion in bribes as part of a currency exchange and money laundering scheme, the United States Department of Justice said.

Italian authorities have seized €1.5 billion ($US 1.7 billion) in assets from the heirs of a late businessman who had allegedly built his wealth on funds provided by Sicily’s notorious Cosa Nostra organized crime group, the country’s Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate (DIA) announced Saturday.

A former business partner of a United States military contractor was sentenced to 18 months in prison for bribing US Army officials with millions of dollars during the Iraq War, the US Department of Justice announced Monday.

A deal between Nigeria and the international oil giants Shell and Eni could end up costing the West African country an estimated US$ 6 billion in lost revenue, the anti-corruption campaign group Global Witness said Monday.

Health authorities around the world have allowed surgical implants to go on the market — and be placed inside patients — despite a lack of adequate testing, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has found.

The Council of Europe (CoE) has urged Ukraine on Thursday to step up its efforts to stop human trafficking even while some progress has been made. The country needs to pay more attention to the trafficking of children and refugees, it said.

Dutch police detained a man on suspicion of money laundering after finding 350,000 euros (US$400,000) hidden inside, well, his washing machine.

Italian police arrested on Thursday dozens of suspected gang members who transported drugs in car compartments that would pop open only after a secret combination of actions, like  lowering the sun visor while putting the gear shift in neutral, switching off the air conditioning or putting it in reverse.

The day Macedonia requested his extradition, former Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski announced he has been granted political asylum in Hungary, where he fled days before he was to serve his two-year jail sentence for corruption.