A company director has been sentenced to four years in prison for fraudulently obtaining a loan of € 1.7 million (US$ 1.9 million) from the Banca de Economii (BEM) – one of the financial institutions at the heart of Moldova's "missing billion" scandal.

According to a new report from Transparency International (TI), the London property market has been flooded with billions of pounds in dirty capital from around the world as criminals use secret offshore companies to bypass money-laundering checks.