Although it slightly improved in 2022, partisanship in the political arena, its blatant uses of gerrymandering, and its inadequate countermeasures against money laundering keep the United States’ global corruption perception ranking close to its historic low, a top official of the global anti-corruption organization Transparency International told OCCRP.

Four suspects who were detained in Haiti for their alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate former President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, have been transferred to the U.S. to face criminal charges in the Southern District of Florida, a U.S. Attorney’s statement said on Tuesday.

Romanian police released on Wednesday the director of the state-owned weapons factory Romarm after prosecutors accused him of purchasing inadequate machines for the production of protective masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing the company to lose nearly US$2 million.

Kyrgyz authorities have ordered independent media outlet Kloop to delete a news article they allege to contain false information or face having their website blocked. The threat comes in the context of a broader attack on independent media in Kyrgyzstan.

Ethnic divisions preventing Bosnia and Herzegovina from fighting corruption have pushed the country down on the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (CPI), where it is recording the lowest score in the Western Balkans, the global civil society group driving the anti-graft struggle said Tuesday in its 2022 CPI report.

A prominent Bangladeshi politician has come under scrutiny by the nation’s Anti-Corruption Commission following an Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project Investigation of his unreported offshore real estate holdings.

An association of Panamanian professionals has renewed its efforts to stop the only open-pit mining by a subsidiary of a Canadian-listed company that has breached more than 200 environmental regulations in Panama.

Croatian authorities launched on Friday a criminal investigation into the disappearance of a luxury yacht from an Adriatic port close to Split, where it was kept as part of Western sanctions imposed on Russian oligarchs close to Putin.

The U.S. hit Russia’s Wagner Group, a private military company that has been fighting the war in Ukraine, with new sanctions that are now also targeting several individuals and firms linked to what the Department of the Treasury said was a “transnational criminal organization.”

Italian police detained 56 suspected mafiosi and seized more than 200 million euros (US$217.89 million) in assets during an operation that, according to authorities, broke the spine of the country’s most prominent organized crime structure, the Calabria-based ‘Ndrangheta.