Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

Poland last year passed amendments to its judiciary that fail to comply with anti-corruption standards and allow politics to influence the justice system, the Council of Europe reported on Thursday.

Switzerland needs to do more to protect whistleblowers, prosecute companies and apply tougher sanctions, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has said, following the publication of an anti-bribery report in the Alpine nation.

The son of Angola’s ex-president has been accused of attempting to defraud US $500 million from the oil-rich nation’s sovereign wealth fund.

Ex-president Lee Myung-bak was arrested on Thursday on charges of bribery, abuse of power, embezzlement, and tax evasion, Channel News Asia reported.

Brazilian authorities arrested a Catholic bishop who along with six other priests is  suspected of having stolen some US$600,000 from church collection boxes, donations and wedding and baptism fees, BBC News reported Tuesday. 

Peruvian president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has resigned following the release of secret recordings which implicate him in a new corruption scandal the day before a scheduled impeachment vote for his role in the largest corruption scandal in Latin American history, the Guardian reported Thursday.

The Guatemalan government removed 11 police investigators from the country’s anti-corruption body on Tuesday, which interpreted the move as an attempt to impede investigations implicating high-ranking politicians and their relatives.

Afghanistan’s government said it has investigated 2,800 corruption cases since the country adopted its anti-graft strategy a year ago but non-governmental organizations claim this is not nearly enough in a country where corruption should be considered a threat to national security.

Peru’s under fire President, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, admitted using an offshore company to avoid paying US taxes ahead of an impeachment vote on Thursday.

A former general manager and secretary of a Singaporean town council was charged on 55 counts of corruption, the Straits Times reported on Wednesday.

Billions of euros in EU funding supposed to help align Turkey with continental-wide laws has mostly failed to improve the rule of law and root out corruption, according to a new report from the European Court of Auditors.

A man died and sixteen others needed medical treatment after being abused during the controversial Saudi corruption crackdown, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

Swiss police arrested on Monday two executives in connection with a lawsuit launched by the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA against a group of partner companies, claiming they had stolen billions in oil revenues from Venezuelans, the Washington Postreported.

Saudi Arabia is to establish specialised anti-corruption units to investigate embezzlement in the kingdom following the recent controversial crackdown that recouped more than US$1bn recouped from detained businessmen and politicians.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where the King Abdullah Financial District sits (Photo: Wikimedia)The decision was a result of the King’s “concern over combating corruption in all its forms aiming to protect the homeland and its resources, maintain public money and protect the integrity of the public employment,” according to a Saudi Press Agency statement.

King Salman also announced that an anti-corruption conference will be held in April at which combating corruption in privatisation programs will be discussed, the Saudi government website reported.

Saudi Arabia is understood to be close to entering a recession after the country spent a third of its reserves in the last three years following a drop in oil prices. Therefore, the kingdom is seeking to diversify its economy and reduce its dependence on gas exports.

Companies operating or planning to invest in Saudi Arabia face a high risk of corruption, claims a report by GAN Integrity, an agency that identifies corruption in business.

Abuse of power, nepotism and the use of middlemen, wasta, to do business are common, it says, suggesting that business practices in Saudi Arabia need to fundamentally change if corruption is to be eradicated, particularly given the overlap between business and politics.

Saudi Arabia detained hundreds of powerful businessmen and royals for several months in an anti-corruption probe in November. The majority of those held were freed after giving up large parts of their wealth to the government.

Several dozen others, whose names have not been disclosed, remain in custody in a prison outside of the capital and may stand trial, although the allegations against them have not been made public.

An appeal court is expected to rule on a peculiar corruption case in Timisoara, Romania, involving a former police chief and a suspended judge who are accused of using their Freemason connections to accept bribes and shield acquaintances from criminal investigations,  Balkan Insight reported.

A former South Korean president is being summoned on allegations of bribery by prosecutors currently investigating high-level political corruption in the country, Reuters reported Tuesday.

The former chief of Macedonia’s anti-corruption commission has resigned from the country’s parliament after the publication of a damning audit that exposed corruption in the State Commission for the Prevention of Corruption.

The former Honduran First Lady, Rosa Elena Bonilla, was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of embezzling around US $500,000 from public initiatives intended for the poor, the Organization of American States (OAS) announced.

The President of Kyrgyzstan called on the country’s corrupted, dysfunctional judicial and national security agencies to launch a merciless fight against graft, saying the problem is already threatening national security, the Times of Central Asia reported on Sunday.

EU spending in Hungary has been flagged by a European parliamentary watchdog days after the European Anti-Fraud’s Office (OLAF) report on problematic public contracts linked to a company owned by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s son-in-law was made public by 24.hr.