In two separate,Europol-coordinated operations, Spanish and Romanian police detained five suspects and dismantled their illegal print shops, preventing this way millions of counterfeit euros and Romanian lei from entering the European financial circuits.

At the request of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Mexican authorities are investigating a Romanian organized crime group that OCCRP recently exposed as running one of the largest ATM scams in the world from its Cancún headquarters.

Undercover reporters from OCCRP and RISE Romania found a trade run by dealers with ties to organized crime, enabled by shady paperwork and made profitable by unscrupulous buyers.

Masks delivered to Romanian hospitals under a procurement contract that saw corruption charges being raised against the head of a state owned-company do not comply with safety standards, experts told OCCRP on Thursday.

The head of a state owned-company responsible for handling coronavirus medical equipment is being charged for soliciting a 760,000 euro (US$860,000) bribe from a firm in exchange for a major contract to supply Romanian hospitals with millions of masks and hundreds of thousands of protective suits. 

Authorities in Romania have brought drug trafficking charges against a man who once posed as US actor Robert de Niro in order to take out fraudulent bank loans.

They weren’t the people you’d peg for success in the world of finance and technology: a group of young men from a small city in an agricultural region of Romania. But they were clever and they had grit — and a unique skill set.

The teeth on an average full-skip chain stand at three-quarter inch intervals and are about the length of a thumbnail. Moving these blades along at a speed of almost 88 feet per second, a gas-powered chainsaw turns even the hardest and oldest of trees to butter.

Of the 38 million cubic meters of forest lost to Romania’s logging industry each year, only 18 million are licensed and accounted for. By the Associated Press. By The Associated Press

The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Romania’s decision to fire the former head of its anti-corruption body as a violation of her right to freedom of expression and a fair trial.

A Romanian national healthcare supplier bought a million masks of questionable quality from a convicted organized crime associate with political ties.

Investigators in more than 15 countries have seized almost 36 million units of medical drugs in a coordinated sting on European groups trafficking black market and counterfeit medications.  

The president of Tanzania fired Interior Minister Kangi Lugola on Thursday, accusing him of mismanaging a US$453 million firefighting equipment contract,Anadolu Agency reported.

Romania’s fugitive former chief prosecutor lost on Wednesday her final appeal in a corruption case and was sentenced to four years behind bars. However, by the time the verdict was pronounced, Alina Bica, who during the process had fled to Costa Rica, was nowhere to be found. 

Romanian Border Policestated they seized on Sunday bags with 750 kilograms of cannabis with an estimated value of EUR9 millions (US$9.87 million) on the black market.

Romania's anti-corruption unit (DNA) said on Thursday that it has launched an investigation into bribery allegations against the CEO of the country’s Oracle branch who is suspected of having given IT companies discounts on products in exchange for bribes.

The Council of Europe’s legal advisors criticized last week Romania’s 2018 judicial reform saying it does not contribute to the fight against high-level corruption but may even be an obstacle.

Europol recently assisted European authorities in dismantling two organized crime groups, one smuggling migrants to the UK and the other trafficking Romanian women to France and forcing them into prostitution.

After years of corruption allegations, Liviu Dragnea, the leader of Romania’s the Social Democratic, was sentenced and jailed for three and a half years on Monday - only a day after Romanians voted for a ban on pardons for corrupt officials.

The EU’s threats to withdraw Romania’s voting rights, funding, and to block it from entering the visa-free Schengen area over the country’s addressal of corruption is “wrong” and “dangerous,” Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă said on Wednesday.

New evidence from a tropical Brazilian getaway show that Liviu Dragnea, one of Romania’s leading politicians, has not been truthful about his relationship with the former head of a company that received millions of euros in EU construction money.