The prime minister’s bodyguard who lives luxuriously in a dual-wing, classically designed, multi-million-dollar mansion. The son of a railway official who sits on the throne of a real estate empire spread across an entire continent. The city mayor whose offshore holdings control some of his home country’s most lucrative construction firms.

The European Union released on Monday a detailed report it publishes every four years outlining current and future threats serious and organized crime can pose to the EU, according to a press release.

Combined with the ongoing normalisation of regional instability and violence, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought on new opportunities for criminal expansion in the Levant, where illicit activity could become a “permanent and pervasive fixture,” experts say.

Myanmar’s lucrative timber trade continues to be mired in criminality and corruption, including systematic tax evasion worth millions of dollars by companies exporting teak wood to European markets, according to a report published Wednesday.

Police in five countries arrested 52 suspected members of a creative organized criminal group which hid cocaine in terrarium bedding material, hashish and marijuana inside hydromassage bathtubs and even built its own submarine.

Experts say that Nigeria’s willingness to pay ransoms, something the government denies, is making school kidnappings ever more attractive to organized criminals, who have abducted more than 600 students since December last year.

Colombia is considering centralizing the purchase of gold to combat illegal mining, violence, and environmental damage and prevent the mineral from entering the black market.

German police arrested eight people aged between 24 and 55 and searched dozens of premises throughout the country as part of a mega operation that targeted right-wing groups allegedly involved in drug and arms trafficking and money laundering.

German police arrested two people last week and raided over 20 locations in Berlin during a massive operation that targeted members of a family-based organized crime group allegedly involved in arms and drug trafficking, financial crime, museum heists and clan clashes.

Italy’s four traditional mafias, along with their newer and smaller counterparts, are increasingly uniting during various criminal ventures to form one cohesive group, an Italian anti-mafia prosecutor said in an interview published on Monday.

Polish police announced Wednesday the arrest of 13 people and seizure of hundreds of thousands of counterfeit and stolen pharmaceuticals it says were the product of an international organized crime ring of Polish and French nationals, according to a statement by the Central Police Investigation Bureau (CBŚP).

The European Union is concerned over escalating trends of violence in organized crime groups, according to a new Europol report that cited examples of makeshift torture chambers in the Netherlands, gang wars in Sweden and reported cases of deadly violence in Denmark, Belgium, Italy and Spain.

As Christians around the world were preparing to celebrate Christmas, the Catholic Church recognized the martyrdom of an Italian judge who was gunned down in 1990 by the Sicilian Mafia, paving the way for his beatification.

In a massive operation throughout 35 different locations in Sarajevo and central Bosnia on Wednesday, authorities detained 14 people suspected of organized crime, money laundering, fraud and business fraud, as well as abuse of power.

With the support of Interpol and the cybersecurity company Group-IB, Nigerian police have apprehended three cybercrime suspects who are alleged to have developed phishing links, domains, and mass mailing campaigns, the international police agency said on Wednesday.

As new technologies offer a world of opportunities and benefits in many sectors, so too do they offer new avenues and for organized crime. It was true at the advent of the internet, and it’s true for the growing field of artificial intelligence and machine learning, according to a new joint report by Europol and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Center.

Terrorist and organized crime groups are spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic in order to erode people’s trust in government or spread their ideology and gain more supporters, the UN warned in a report published this month.

Kyrgyz law enforcement officers on Thursday arrested Kamchybek Aslanbek, aliasKamchybek Kolbayev, one of the Kyrgyzstan’s top organized crime bosses.

Maritime and fishing communities around the world are particularly vulnerable to organized crime which threatens an economy that globally puts 17% of protein on the table, says a new report released by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy. 

An independent government watchdog revealed on Monday that businesses belonging to a Ukrainian billionaire linked to Russian interference in U.S. elections received a total of US$21 million in small business loans from the U.S. government.