Corruption

El Salvador’s top prosecutor has effectively halted a money-laundering investigation into a Venezuela-financed oil venture whose funds flowed into bank accounts linked to President Nayib Bukele.

The fight against corruption is seen as weakening across the globe in 2025, with “bold, accountable leadership” in decline, according to Transparency’s International’s newly released Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). 

Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office said Monday it will file corruption charges against Ecopetrol President Ricardo Roa, alleging misconduct tied to his role as finance manager for President Gustavo Petro’s 2022 campaign and to contracting decisions at the state-run oil company, the Associated Press said. 

Last month, the dollar-pegged stablecoin created by the Trump family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, reached an important milestone: the total circulation of USD1 exceeded $5 billion for the first time, ranking it among the world’s top cryptocurrencies, according to recent reporting by The New York Times. 

A massive corruption trial that spanned a decade ended last week in Turks and Caicos with the convictions of the jurisdiction’s former premier, his brother, and a one-time governmental minister, the Miami Herald said. 

A top Democratic lawmaker has opened a congressional probe into the $500-million investment deal between representatives of Abu Dhabi’s “spy sheik” and the Trump family’s crypto firm World Liberty Financial, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Uzbekistan’s state-owned mining giant Almalyk Mining-Metallurgical Complex (AMMC) has awarded more than $200 million in procurement tenders to 10 foreign firms whose ownership and business activity are murky, including companies that reported themselves as “dormant” or “inactive,” OCCRP reported. 

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) has launched an investigation into suspected customs fraud, corruption and document forgery linked to operations in the Port of Antwerp, alleging a scheme that caused an estimated €11.3 million in lost EU import duties. 

An Abu Dhabi royal secretly backed a $500-million deal to buy nearly half of a Trump-linked cryptocurrency venture months before the United Arab Emirates secured expanded access to tightly controlled U.S. artificial-intelligence chips, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

The Trump administration has granted confidential licenses to two of the world’s largest oil traders, Vitol and Trafigura, to broker sales of Venezuelan crude, despite both firms’ recent brushes with bribery prosecutions tied to oil deals elsewhere, The Washington Post reported.