Swiss Authorities have widened their investigation into the Russian money laundering scheme uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky before he was arrested by Russian authorities and died in their custody.

Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer and accountant who blew the whistle on Russian officials who stole $230 million in tax proceeds from the state and laundered it through a web of phantom companies and offshore accounts. When he exposed the crime, Magnitsky was arrested and charged with the very fraud he uncovered. For four months prior to his death in 2009, Magnistky was held at Butyrka detention center where he was denied treatment for pancreatitis and gallstones.

The Swiss authorities last year froze Credit Suisse accounts belonging to a Russian tax official who had approved numerous illegal tax refunds used to bilk the treasury of millions. They have now requested to freeze several more bank accounts containing millions of unspecified currency in connection with the Magnistky investigation, according to reports from Swiss media.

Last month, the anti-money-laundering unit of the Cypriot government opened its own investigation into the Russian tax fraud ring, suspecting that banks in Cyprus may have been used to launder some of the stolen money.

An Azerbaijani Member of Parliament said Monday that OCCRP was biased by Armenian interests in its selection of Ilham Aliyev as OCCRP's "Man of the Year" according to the News.Az website.  MP Fuad Muradov claimed to have inside information that Edik Baghdasaryan, director of HETQ and Armenian Investigative Journalists, influenced the selection through his position on the board of directors of OCCRP.

According to emails, senior executives at the embattled Swedish telecom TeliaSonera were fully aware they were working with the daughter of Uzbekistan's dictator's when they opened a subsidiary in that country.

Dinosaurs, Rhinos, and Knowledge smuggling.

Costa Rica has lately become an operational base for organized crime groups in South America, according to an internal report by Costa Rica's narcotics police.

Here are the five biggest schemes perpetrated this year alone.

Police in China broke up nine child trafficking rings this week in a sting operation, rescuing 89 children and arresting 355 suspects, the Ministry of Public Security announced Monday. 

In the past two and a half years, some 54,000 children have been rescued from traffickers in China, according to government statistics. The children are usually boys, who are sold on the black market and then purchased by Chinese families seeking a male heir. 

Chinese media have reported regularly on break up of child-trafficking rings for at least ten years, but the overall numbers are an area of dispute. Security officials tend to report abductions in the range of 30,000 to 60,000, while non-governmental advocates claim the numbers are much greater, as high as 200,000 annually. 

Announcing the sweep on Monday, a senior police official said that current prices in the baby trade hover below $5,000 in China's interior, but that the trafficked children are resold for three times that much in the wealthier coastal provinces, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Russian prosecutors on Dec. 24 dropped their accusations against the only person being tried in connection with the prison death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, asking a court to find a former prison official not guilty.

(Reuters)

Police in Serbia arrested 11 men Monday in a sweep against corruption in football clubs, according to local media reports. The men were reportedly charged with abuse of office, money laundering, and tax evasion in a series of scams that police say cost the Serbian government more than $19 million.

Among the arrested were three Club Radnicki managers; the head of the local political party Zajedno za Kragujavac; and the owner of a bookkeeping agency. Six unnamed suspects were arrested for money laundering and tax evasion during the process of "buying and selling recycled materials."

Serbian football clubs have faced several scandals this year, including a series of match-fixing allegations this spring that led to the arrest of Serbian player Almir Gegic, and high-profile sanctions in October after race-fueled fights during an under-21 international match against England.

A shocking amount of counterfeit food made its way to dinner tables this year, according to a national database created to track this growing trend.