A former mid-ranking police officer in Kazakhstan’s largest city ran a massive organized crime operation that for a decade stole millions of dollars worth of cars abroad, investigators said Sunday.

Two senior officials of Romania’s tax agency and finance ministry resigned on Friday after being accused of complicity in a nearly US$ 145 million tax evasion case involving alcohol producers and marketers.

A special prosecutor set up in Macedonia to investigate allegations of widespread political corruption has gained access to possible evidence of illegal wiretapping by former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, ending a standoff with secret police that started earlier in the week, a deputy at the special prosecutors' office told the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) on Friday.

Russian police have detained the head of state firm JSC Corporation of Development, Sergey Maslov, on allegations he took part in the embezzlement of more than one billion rubles (US$ 16.03 million), state news agency Interfax reported Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin promoted the country’s sports minister to a newly created deputy prime minister role on Wednesday, despite his connection to a doping scandal that saw many Russian athletes barred from this year’s Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The family of an Italian organized crime accountant appears to have dodged the seizure of its British assets by moving them offshore to Malta, and is now using its new island base to run successful online gambling platforms, according to an investigation by journalists at Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI), an OCCRP partner.

Romanian prosecutors on Tuesday indicted the former deputy governor of the country’s central bank, Bogdan Olteanu, for allegedly receiving a € 1 million (US$ 1.1 million) bribe to influence the appointment of a governor.

A court in the United States ruled on Monday to disqualify lawyers representing a firm connected to the Magnitsky fraud case, after they had switched sides to defend a company accused of money laundering.

Civil society groups and opposition parties have cried foul over elections in Montenegro on Sunday that saw a likely victory by Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, amid widespread allegations of electoral violations and panic over an alleged plot to stage an armed attack to disturb the vote.

Two Polish nationals were charged on Saturday for allegedly importing more than one tonne of crystal MDMA from Europe and could face life in prison, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said.