Mass protests continued for the third night in a row against Alexander Lukashenko’s landslide victory that gave him his sixth presidential mandate in what thousands of his opponents consider a rigged election.

Prosecutors in Florida accused a former economics minister of Guatemala, of laundering about US$10 million in illegal drug trafficking proceeds and of corruption, a statement from theU.S. Department of Justicesaid on Wednesday.

As authorities are counting the dead and hospitals are struggling to treat survivors of the massive blast that ripped through Beirut on Tuesday, a mourning population is wondering who is to blame for the disaster in their country that has been engulfed by ruling class corruption and negligence for decades.

Frustration among Azeris has been growing for some time over the forced contributions to the national coronavirus relief fund and payouts of a meagre US$110 for those who have lost their livelihood during the pandemic, but exploded on last week when they heard the government had given half a million dollars to newly-established companies to fund religious events.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned this week that corruption in times of the COVID-19 pandemic is more than just wasted money, and that in fact it erodes the social contract and corrodes the government’s ability to help grow the economy in a way that benefits all citizens.

Reaffirming its commitment to combating corruption in Venezuela, the U.S. administration decided on Tuesday to sanction two former Venezuelan officials for their alleged involvement in a number of crimes they profited from at the costs of the Venezuelan people.

Authorities in Pakistan have launched an official probe into the country’s sugar industry following explosive allegations of fraud, cartelisation and corruption that have all but threatened to engulf the country’s government.

Two gunmen killed a Pakistani journalist who had days before his death criticized authorities in the Balochistan province, accusing them of corruption, a Pakistan-based media and development sector watchdogannounced Monday.

The 21-day trial of the murder of Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancee, concluded on Thursday with the prosecutor recommending that the three remaining defendants in the case receive 25-year prison sentences.

A London court sentenced on Thursday Ziad Akle, the former manager of the Monaco-based energy consultancyUnaoil, to five years behind bars for paying over US$500,000 in bribes to secure a $55 million contract to supply offshore mooring buoys in Iraq.

For years the ICDO, a decades-old international organization based in Switzerland, functioned essentially as a front for the Russian government. The organization’s lack of transparency and dependence on Moscow also gave officials an opportunity to pad their pockets.

Alexey Navalny, Kremlin’s loudest critic,announced on Monday that his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) will be shut down due to the lofty fines Russian courts ordered them to pay for the alleged false or defamatory information against the country’s top officials.

A recent investigation has found that private companies in Kyrgyzstan are illegally obtaining lucrative public procurement contracts by rigging auctions online, in some cases suggesting possible collusion with government agencies.

The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking the forfeiture of a Maryland property belonging to former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh worth some US$3.5 million, which he is believed to have acquired through illegal activities during his two decades at the helm of the West African nation. 

A Moscow city lawmaker said she discovered how contracts are being rigged by officials who use disappearing ink to adjust prices of infrastructure and other works and line their pockets with the difference.

Two former managers of the Monaco-based energy consultancyUnaoil have bribed Iraqi authorities to secure favorable contracts in the war-torn country, a UK court established in a process that was marred by accusations against the head of the UK Serious Fraud Office of having been vulnerable to flattery from an Unaoil agent.

Following a retrial, a high court in Seoul reduced the sentence of South Korea’s former President Park Geun-hye to 20 years in prison in the latest development of a corruption scandal that led to her impeachment in 2017, the state-owned South Korean press agency Yonhap reported. 

Italian national police announced on Thursday they arrested 31 people, including public officials, members of the military, and businessmen, suspected of corruption and fraud related to procurement contracts of the country’s armed forces.

If governments fail to guard against fraud and bribery in health-care supply chains as they secure essential medicines and personal-protective equipment in the fight against COVID-19, human rights could be abused and lives could be lost, UN experts warned.

Experts have identified the remains of one of the 43 Mexican students who went missing in the town of Iguala six years ago. The group was allegedly believed to have been abducted by police, handed over to a local crime gang and executed.