Austria’s former vice chancellor and leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) went on trial on Tuesday in Vienna for helping change a law in order to accommodate the owner of a private hospital in exchange for a donation to his party and a weekend on the hospital owner’s yacht.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Sunday that he expects to be charged by anti-corruption prosecutors who are investigating whether he gave false testimony to a parliamentary commission at the time of the so-called “Ibiza affair,” a scandal that led to the collapse of his previous government in 2019.

An Argentinian attorney has turned to the Austrian government and the European Central Bank (ECB) for information that would explain why Austria’s defunct Meinl Bank has bought off the debt of the bankrupt Argentinian postal service against its own and the interest of other creditors but in favor of the family of Argentine former President Mauricio Macri.

The shell companies handled extravagant transactions on behalf of the former president while the bank turned a blind eye.

Anti-corruption police searched the home of Austrian Finance Minister, Gernot Blümel, as part of a bribery investigation involving the country’s gambling giant Novomatic and several high-ranking political figures.

The European Court of Justice announced on Thursday that Romania and Ireland will have to pay three million euro (US$3.43 million) and two million euro ($2.29 million) respectively for having failed to follow an EU directive intended to prevent illicit financial flows that lead to money laundering and terrorist financing.

Authorities in Latvia have launched criminal proceedings against a group that allegedly laundered more than €7 million (US$7.67 million) through a string of fictitious plastic granule companies.

An Austrian bank caught facilitating money laundering said on Monday that it filed for bankrupcy, ending almost a century in banking for one of Austria’s most famous families.

Austrian cross-country skier and whistleblower Johannes Dürr got a 15-month suspended sentence for doping after he admitted to “serious sports fraud” related to taking performance-enhancing drugs and helping other athletes to do so also, Agence France-Presse announced.

The General Court of the European Union on Wednesday gave a reprieve to Austria’s former Meinl Bank (now called Anglo Austrian Bank), allowing it to keep its banking license pending further court action.

A storied bank helped Eastern European bankers loot their own institutions.

The Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body,GRECO, said on Wednesday that Austria should show more ambition in implementing its recommendations on measures to prevent corruption in the parliament and the judiciary.

A secretly-filmed video showing Austria’s Vice Chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache, discussing corrupt deals has thrown the government into turmoil and forced the far-right politician to resign on Saturday.

Russia’s expanding money laundering scandal spread to Austria on Tuesday, as the fallout from the Troika Laundromat echoed across the continent.

Austrian and Romanian authorities have arrested 11 suspects of organized migrant smuggling and seized documents, phones and money while searching 25 properties, the EU’s Judicial Cooperation Unit, Eurojust, said in a statement on Tuesday.

After two years of proceedings, Austria’s Supreme Court granted Tuesday Russia’s request to extradite a notorious mob boss whose gang carried out more than 60 contract killings, Russian media reported.

Hungary indicted on Thursday 11 suspected people-smugglers for the death of 71 refugees whose bodies were found two years ago in a truck in Austria during the peak of Europe’s migration crisis.

Ukrainian authorities detained an ex-MP and a state energy firm deputy chief for the embezzlement of US$ 17.3 million from selling uranium concentrate at inflated prices, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) said Friday.

Spanish authorities detained four people on Monday suspected of being part of a migrant smuggling network that may have been used by the Islamic State (IS) to bring its members to Europe.