The longest trial in the history of the Netherlands concluded Tuesday when the Amsterdam District Court imposed life sentences on three individuals, including the head of a criminal organization involved in drug trafficking to Europe and underworld killings.

Italian, Latvian, and Lithuanian authorities have joined forces to dismantle a major money laundering operation tied to a Lithuanian financial institution, suspected of laundering around two billion euro (US$2.17 billion) since 2017, Europol said Wednesday.

Italy’s financial authorities arrested five individuals implicated in a value added tax (VAT) fraud scheme that resulted in the theft of 220 million euros (US$323.6 million) in alcohol-related tax revenue, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) reported Tuesday.

When the British petroleum giant Shell PLC announced last month that it would sell off its Nigerian oil interests, locals were left wondering if the deal would undermine efforts to clean up the mess the oil company has left in their homeland, a vast river delta now choked with pollution.

The United Kingdom government has thrown its support behind a bill aimed at combating intimidatory Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) lawsuits, which stifle free speech and enable corrupt elites to silence journalists and critics with baseless legal claims.

In the most recent crackdown on foreign and independent media, which appears to have escalated in anticipation of the upcoming elections in March, Russian officials designated Radio Svoboda (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – RFE/RL) as an “undesirable organization.”

The United States charged the head of a Japanese crime group who tried to sell plutonium and uranium from Myanmar to undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents. The agents pretended to be buying it on behalf of Iran.

The U.S. and Canada sanctioned Friday hundreds of individuals and entities to mark the two year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, joining the U.K and the EU in putting pressure on the Kremlin.

The European Union has unveiled its 13th package of restrictive measures targeting the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine is soon entering its third year.

U.K. authorities have frozen 22 London properties that the Azerbaijani lawmaker Javanshir Feyziyev and his wife are suspected to have bought with “the proceeds of unlawful conduct,” a high court heard on Thursday.