Italian police in Sicily arrested on Wednesday 45 people believed to be linked to theCosa Nostra mafia, while German police arrested the clan’s deputy leader in the southwestern town of Wolzburg.

German payment and financial services provider, Wirecard, announced on Thursday that it would file for insolvency just days after its former CEO surrendered to authorities following an arrest warrant they issued against him over a missing 1.9 billion euros (US$ 2.13 billion) the firm claimed probably “do not exist.”

Germanpolice are looking for witnesses of the theft of 400,000 masks from that what it described as a carefully planned carjacking that took place on Monday.

One of the world’s most persecuted journalists welcomed on Thursday a ruling of the German constitutional court which declared the surveillance of telecommunications of non-Germans outside of Germany to be illegal, but questioned the deadline the court has given authorities to change the law. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed last week that hackers tied to the Russian military intelligence, GRU, have compromised her email accounts and those of other Bundestag lawmakers back in 2015.

With coronavirus cramping the usual activities of gangsters, organized crime is increasingly going online, experts said on Thursday, following the bust of a group attempting to sell millions of non-existent masks to German health authorities.

An Azerbaijani journalist was released on Tuesday after having served two of the six years he was sentenced to by a Baku court despite criticism from human rights organizations which claimed the charges were baseless.

Due to the spread of the coronavirus, a Hawaiian judge postponed on Monday the sentencing of a former high-ranking Honolulu prosecutor and her husband, a retired police chief in Hawaii's biggest corruption investigation, theAssociated Press (AP) reported.

An inventive gang has over the past few years developed a lucrative, illegal business: they rent bulldozers and similar machines from construction companies in Germany and sell them to construction companies in other EU countries.

The Swiss trial of four former soccer officials over alleged fraud in Germany’s bid to host the 2006 World Cup could be discontinued if a doctor finds the defendants not able to attend the hearings over COVID-19 risks, public broadcaster RTS reported.

German police arrested six suspected members of a gang that made significant profits from trafficking people from Vietnam to Germany and making them work in nail parlors and sweatshops to pay off their debts.

Police raided homes and offices of money laundering suspects across Germany and Belgium Thursday in an attempt to track a money trail flowing from anAzerbaijani laundromat operation to shell companies in the Baltic, the FrankfurtProsecutor’s Office confirmed.

German police arrested two alleged members of an organized crime group suspected of  trafficking Syrians and is looking for six other suspects, four of which are members of a Lebanese family, according to a release from the prosecutor’s office in Trier. 

South African activists protested outside the German consulate in Cape Town on Thursday in an attempt to hold a German-based company accountable for incompatible locomotives acquired in a deal they claim was dubious and involved bribes.

European police authorities said on Tuesday they had busted a criminal network that sold fake olive oil in Germany and Italy.

Three Germans have been charged on Friday by US prosecutors with administering one of the world’s largest dark web marketplaces, Wall Street Market, a site with thousands of listings for drugs, contraband, counterfeit goods and illegal narcotics.

Transparency Germany announced Thursday it has filed a criminal complaint against two politicians, one member of Parliament (the Bundestag), and another former MP, for their roles in an alleged bribery case masterminded by the Azerbaijani government known as the Azerbaijani Laundromat.

German authorities announced on Wednesday they seized 50 million euros (US$56.7 million) believed to be derived from the “Russian Laundromat” - an international money laundering scheme exposed in 2014 by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

Dutch and German police arrested 12 people Friday for suspected involvement in an international drug trafficking ring that used the dark web to sell an array of drugs to buyers around the world, Europol said last week.

A German MP is the first person to face political consequences in her home country for involvement in the Azerbaijani Laundromat, a US$2.9 billion influence peddling scandal between Azeri government and more than a dozen European politicians.