In a massive coordinated effort led byInterpol, police in Central and South America arrested 14,260 people and seized 8,263 illegal firearms and 305,000 rounds of ammunition in what is being described by the international police agency as the biggest firearms operation ever.

Ecuadorianpolice arrested seven people, including four former executives of the country’s oil company Petroecuador, suspected of participating in a multi-million dollar bribery and money laundering scheme that allegedly involved a friend of a former president.

Brazilextradited one of the most prominent leaders of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia, who was on the run for over two decades after an Italian court sentenced him to 30 years for international drug trafficking.

A Brazilian court sent a man who helped a gemstone company launder at least US$44 ill-gotten millions to prison for 13 years. The case is an offshoot of the famous Operation Lava Jato, or Car Wash, South America’s biggest corruption scandal in history.

Uruguay and Chile are the two Latin American countries most capable of combating corruption according to the newly published Capacity to Combat Corruption (CCC) Index which placed Bolivia and Venezuela at the bottom of the list.

It’s been an eventful week for Mexico, with the extradition of two high-profile cartel members to the US, threats made against a national newspaper by organised criminals and the seizure of a gold-plated assault rifle from the leader of a murderous syndicate calling themselves ‘The Women with Moustaches.’

Colombia’s ambassador to Uruguay resigned on Monday after his country announced he was under investigation after authorities found a narcotic production facility on one of his properties, the Colombian Foreign Ministry announced. 

Uruguay’s reputation for stability on a continent wracked with political and social unrest has made its law enforcement authorities too complacent to prevent the country from becoming a drug trafficking hub in recent years, German broadcasterDeutsche Welle reported Tuesday.

Italy has been looking for him for a quarter of a century and was awaiting his extradition when the Uruguayan Interior Ministry announced on Monday that Milan’s “cocaine king,” Rocco Morabito, had escaped from prison. 

Uruguay rejected an asylum request on Monday by Peru’s former president Alan Garcia, who is being investigated in Peru for suspected bribery related to the massive Odebrecht corruption scandal that has rattled many South American countries, Reuters reported.

Rocco Morabito, 51, was one of those ‘Ndrangheta members who were good enough in trafficking cocaine from Latin America to Europe without being caught for decades.

 U.S. Federal prosecutors are investigating North Korea’s role in the attempted theft of nearly US$ 1 billion from the Central Bank of Bangladesh in February 2016.