Organized Crime

Star Entertainment’s ex-chief executive Matthias Bekier and former in-house lawyer Paula Martin breached their directors’ duties during the casino operator’s “Chinese money-laundering era”, the Australian Federal Court found.

Washington is increasingly turning U.S. anti-corruption enforcement into an instrument of economic statecraft—a shift that threatens to undercut decades of American efforts to fight illicit activity abroad.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said a special committee investigating anti-graft chief Azam Baki’s shareholdings is expected to release its findings soon, Bloomberg said. 

Western governments are being urged to tighten controls on cryptocurrency after new research warned that criminals and hostile states have laundered an estimated $350 billion using crypto over the past two decades.

Germany will overhaul its core federal security agencies and deploy artificial intelligence as part of a crackdown on organized crime, related money laundering, and other financial crimes, Reuters reported Wednesday. 

Waste crime and trafficking is expanding globally, fueled by profit incentives in a fast-growing waste-management industry and compounded by major blind spots in official data, according to a newly released report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). 

Australia’s booming cocaine consumption among affluent professionals has helped turn the country into the world’s unlikely cocaine capital, fueling criminal networks linked to murder, human trafficking, and extortion.

A 42-year-old American citizen suspected by French investigators of leading a vast international money laundering network known as “Dark Bank” has been extradited from the United States to France, Le Monde reported.

A surge in gold and silver prices is drawing organized-crime groups to Mexico’s mining sector, forcing companies to absorb rising security costs and, in some cases, make “protection” payments or use suppliers linked to criminal groups.

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.