EU

Hungarian prosecutors and police have seized around 92 billion forints ($300 million) in funds and securities in a money laundering probe of foundations set up by the National Bank of Hungary.

Italian authorities are seizing more than €200 million ($232 million) in assets tied to late Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, including funds derived from drug trafficking and laundered across Europe and beyond.

Local governments in southern Italy that colluded with organized crime deliberately avoided large EU-funded projects to stay below anti-mafia certification thresholds, according to new academic research.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have jointly concluded that deliberate de-risking campaigns by traditional Baltic banks have driven large-scale client migration toward Lithuanian fintech firms, concentrating money laundering risk in a single digital institution.

Spain’s National Court has charged former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero with money laundering, influence peddling, document falsification, and related criminal offenses stemming from the government’s €53-million pandemic-era bailout of Plus Ultra airlines.

Polish lawmakers on Friday approved a bill regulating cryptocurrencies as a scandal over the collapse of the country’s biggest crypto exchange widened and questions deepened over whether President Karol Nawrocki, who has twice vetoed similar measures, will sign it into law.

Multiple major German banks have abruptly frozen the accounts of Russian and Belarusian nationals living in Germany, demanding fresh proof of residency and leaving long-term customers without access to their money.

European Union foreign ministers have agreed to impose sanctions on Israeli settlers over violence against Palestinians as well as on members of Hamas, breaking a months-long deadlock after Hungary’s new government lifted a veto put in place under former Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Hungarian police have opened a misappropriation and money-laundering investigation into the companies of Gyula Balásy, one of the country’s most prominent media and advertising figures and a long-time architect of Viktor Orbán’s government propaganda campaigns.

ING Belgium has agreed to pay a €1.6 million settlement over alleged failures to report suspicious transactions linked to former European Commissioner Didier Reynders.