Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s campaign against critical media continued this week as the regime abruptly took the Deutsche Welle channel off the air late Monday, hours after it aired a story describing the country as the world’s second most corrupt.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) warned in its 2023 Annual Report that serious organized crime continues to inflict substantial harm on the EU budget, estimating the damage at 19.2 billion euro (US$20.84 billion) in 2023.

Global Affairs Canada (GAC) sanctioned Sunday six Russians it deems responsible for the death of Alexei Navalny, whose political career stood as a direct challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime.

The International Criminal Court Thursday deemed a convicted Ugandan warlord liable for more than €52 million (US$56 million) in reparations to his nearly 50,000 victims, who include child soldiers and women subjected to sexual assault.

The more things change, the more they remain the same, according to U.S. prosecutors. Specifically, the United States has moved to renew sanctions  against the notorious Guatemalan drug trafficking organization, the Los Pochos, despite its change in leadership.

A woman whose job it is to help poor people buy their own homes was charged on Wednesday with stealing more than 30 properties from impoverished clients in the Detroit area.

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.