Corruption

Peter Mandelson is facing scrutiny from the EU anti-fraud office after the European Commission asked investigators to examine his conduct during his tenure as the bloc’s trade commissioner.

The U.S. on Thursday blacklisted five senior Nicaraguan officials for their alleged role in helping Nicaragua to consolidate authoritarian power through financial controls, labor policy, surveillance, and military intelligence operations.

There has been visible discontent with Albania’s government in recent weeks, with protestors hurling petrol bombs at government buildings and calling out Prime Minister Edi Rama by name.

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of crypto exchange Binance who was pardoned by President Trump in October, returned to the U.S. this week and attended a Trump-backed crypto conference alongside the president’s sons and senior administration officials.

Last December, the Trump administration moved swiftly to free former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández after President Donald Trump granted him an unexpected pardon for his 2024 conviction on bribery and drug-trafficking charges. Few would’ve predicted what happened next.

As allegations swirled in 2023 that the Adani Group’s yearslong stock rally was driven by insider manipulation, two close associates of the Adani family privately admitted to their bankers that they held billions of dollars in the conglomerate’s shares through multiple hedge funds, according to bank records. 

Peru’s Congress voted Tuesday to remove interim President José Jerí from office as he faces corruption and influence-peddling allegations, plunging the country into another bout of political instability just weeks before April’s presidential and congressional elections, according to France 24.

Belgian prosecutors have charged two people close to former European Commissioner Didier Reynders as part of a money-laundering investigation that until now had focused on Reynders alone.

Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities on Monday accused former energy minister German Galushchenko of laundering millions of dollars in kickbacks in a high-profile corruption case that has shaken the wartime government.

The Council of Europe has agreed to remove the diplomatic immunity granted to Thorbjoern Jagland, clearing the way for Norwegian police to investigate the former secretary general’s newly uncovered relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.