An internal investigation at the Macedonian capital Skopje’s airport has been tasked with determining how the former Chief of Secret Police managed to pass through security with a gun that was later detected by Serbian authorities at Belgrade airport last week.

Several thousands people gathered Sunday night for a fresh protest in Podgorica’s main city square to issue an ultimatum to Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic to step down by next weekend or see “the whole of Montenegro” protest in the capital.

Italian police together with Costa Rican authorities have arrested seven people in Costa Rica, charging them with the international trafficking of cocaine.

Police forces in Montenegro have been accused of using excessive force after they moved to end what had been a predominantly protest on Saturday morning in front of the Montenegrin Parliament in Podgorica.

The former prime minister of Moldova Vlad Filat has been detained by the National Anti-Corruption Center in connection with the disappearance of more than a billion dollars from three Moldovan banks.

An Afghan man was shot and killed late Thursday evening on the Bulgarian-Turkish border in the first such deadly incident on a European Union (EU) border since the beginning of the refugee crisis.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned an apparent smear campaign against Atanas Chobanov, editor of the Bulgarian investigative reporting website Bivol.bg, an OCCRP partner.

A court in Baku has rejected petitions by the defense lawyers of imprisoned Azerbaijani investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova at a Thursday hearing.

At an anti-corruption committee meeting today Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, former head of Ukraine’s Security Service, accused lawmaker Ihor Kononenko, of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, of money laundering. 

The chairman of the board of Serbia’s Privatization Agency – revealed by OCCRP partner KRIK to have once signed a deal with an associate of convicted drug lord Darko Saric – has been made director of the agency while it claimed it had checked his background and found no wrongdoing.