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.

A former employee of Mossack Fonseca—the Panamanian law firm at the center of the 2016 Panama Papers leak of more than 11.5 million legal and financial records—was extradited to Germany on Wednesday in connection to the sprawling international tax scheme exposed by the investigation, German media reported.

Weak laws and regulations in Germany allow billions of euros of dirty cash to be funneled into its real estate market, turning the country into a hotbed for money laundering, according to a Transparency International report published on Friday.

European financial elite lifted 55 billion euros, about US$63 billion, out of state coffers by receiving tax reimbursements for tax that had never been paid, a new crossborder investigation exposed Thursday.

Germany is overhauling its anti-money laundering agency after years of being highly understaffed, backlogged, and delayed on urgent money laundering issues, the Handelsblatt reported on Thursday.

More than 25,000 cultural and archaeological artifacts worth a total of € 40 million (US$46.7 million) were seized from 40 houses in Italy, Germany, UK, and Spain on Wednesday, Europol reported.

Josephine Iyamu, a nurse from London, was convicted on Thursday of organizing a sex trafficking network that performed voodoo rituals on Nigerian women before bringing them to Europe and forcing them into sex work, National Crime Agency announced.

German and Danish authorities dismantled an organised crime group suspected of having facilitated hundreds of sham marriages with EU citizens to grant permanent residence permits to illegal migrants from Asia, German police said Wednesday.

German authorities raided more than 60 brothels and apartments and detained several suspects during Wednesday’s nationwide crackdown on forced prostitution and organized crime.

German prosecutors are investigating possible bribery related to the construction of a pipeline that pumps gas from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea, the German magazine Stern reported Wednesday.

A German courtsentenced on Tuesday a former intelligence agent to one year of probation for attempting to share state secretsin jihadist online chats,Deutsche Welle reported on Tuesday.

A member of the German parliament and close ally of Angela Merkel received payments from Azerbaijan through a firm that lobbied for the regime’s better image, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported Tuesday. 

 German authorities will launch an investigation into media reports claiming the US flew weapons for Syrian rebels through the Ramstein air base behind Germany’s back.

Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, Porsche and Daimler are under investigation by the EU and German authorities for forming a secret ‘economic cartel’ in the 1990s to collude on diesel emissions, after Daimler blew the whistle, media reported Monday.