Romania’s president on Wednesday greenlit a criminal investigation into allegations of bribery levelled against a former prime minister currently serving as speaker of the country’s senate.

Romania’s Prince Paul-Phillipe al României is a wanted man in his own country after a court sentenced him to almost 3.5 years in prison for corruption. The prince was found to have been involved in the illegal restitution and then sale of land that belonged to his family before it was nationalized by the communists.

In July this year, senators in Rome received a letter from the local head of tobacco company Philip Morris, containing what he promised was “very important news for Italy.”

A U.S. court found a Bulgarian national and owner of a Bitcoin exchange guilty for his role in an international fraud scheme that lured at least 900 Americans into purchasing online items that didn’t exist, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Romanian police uncovered a number of rare books, including first editions of Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton from the 16th and 17th century as well as other priceless historical antiques, that were stolen in 2017 from a warehouse in west London’s Feltham,Europol said on Friday.

Spanish National Police arrested 12 people suspected of organizing asham marriage network that facilitated illegal immigration into the European Union, Europol said in astatement on Wednesday.

The European Court of Justice announced on Thursday that Romania and Ireland will have to pay three million euro (US$3.43 million) and two million euro ($2.29 million) respectively for having failed to follow an EU directive intended to prevent illicit financial flows that lead to money laundering and terrorist financing.

Italy has placed Romania’s former chief anti-corruption prosecutor under house arrest on Monday where she will stay until a decision is made about her extradition to Bucharest where she was sentenced to four years in jail for corruption.

When packages of cocaine started washing up on the beaches of the Black Sea last year, it made headlines around the world. Romanian police swiftly scrambled hundreds of officers in what they said was an unprecedented search for the seaborne drugs.

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.