Bulgaria’s prosecution office said on Monday it will ask Spanish authorities to provide information about an alleged money laundering investigation that might link the country’s long-serving prime minister Boyko Borisov to assets in Spain worth roughly five million euro (US$5.4 million).

Spanish police detained 20 suspected members of an organized crime group that ran an illegal cigarette factory in a bunker hidden four meters below the ground at a horse stable near Malaga. Workers inside were locked up for days and almost suffocated due to lack of air. 

The embezzlement trial of former French presidential candidate Francois Fillon and his wife Peneloppe that was to start on Monday has been postponed because of a lawyers strike.

A Brazilian court has sent a former shipbuilding firm consultant to jail for 19 years after judges found him guilty of bribing officials of the state-controlled oil company Petrobras in order to obtain construction contracts. 

Switzerland’s Financial Market Authority (FINMA) banned on Thursday one of the largest Swiss multinational private banks from conducting any significant acquisitions after finding it failed to combat money laundering between 2009 and early 2018.

The Dutch Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Services (FIOD) arrested two men Monday on suspicion of laundering millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, according to a joint statement by the Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement (J5).

A paper the World Bank released on Tuesday shows that countries dependent on aid from the organization see increased flows into tax secrecy havens, suggesting that some of its funds is ending up in the wrong hands. 

An appellate department of a Seoul High Court revoked bail for former South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and sent him back to prison to serve 17 years for bribery and financial embezzlement, the South Korean Yonhap news agency reported. In 2018, a lower court sentenced him to just 15 years on those charges.

Monaco has not done much in response to recommendations from the Council of Europe’s (COE) anti-corruption body (GRECO) on how to prevent corruption among parliamentarians, judges and prosecutors, according to GRECO’s latest report, published Monday.

Miami authorities Tuesday arrested members of an alleged organized crime ring who used social media to target some dozen wealthy people with jewelry and valuables to steal, according to the Miami Herald.