In a long awaited move, the U.S-based arts and craft store Hobby Lobby forfeited a rare cuneiform tablet to authorities who plan to return it to Iraq along with some 17,000 other suspected smuggled and looted artifacts in what will be the largest restitution of illegally acquired cultural property in history. 

Four Democratic lawmakers called on the Biden administration to place sanctions on Israel-based NSO Group, and companies like it, after recent revelations from an international media investigation into how NSO’s Pegasus spyware was used to spy on heads of states, journalists and activists.

A new bill introduced last week to the Congress could allow the United States to publish the names of human rights abusers and kleptocrats who are banned from entering the country. The bill aims to burst the culture of confidentiality which currently prevents the public from knowing who has been sanctioned this way and for what.

The United States has barred former Honduran President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa and his wife and former First Lady Rosa Elena Bonilla Avila from entering the country due to “their involvement in significant corruption,” the State Department announced on Tuesday.

The United States has charged former President Donald Trump’s close friend and ally Tom Barrack and two others on seven counts for “acting and conspiring to act as agents of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)” without notifying U.S. authorities, a Justice Department statement said Tuesday.

China denied on Tuesday allegations made by Western powers that Chinese state-backed actors were orchestrating malicious cyber activity, including cyber attacks such as the one against Microsoft that took place in early 2021 and affected a quarter of a million servers worldwide.

Police in California arrested on Thursday a Hollywood producer on an indictment that accused him of using his production company to run an international prostitution business and launder the proceeds.

Three men accused of laundering millions of dollars on behalf of transnational organized crime and drug traffickers have been arrested and charged in the U.S., the Department of Justice revealed in a statement on Wednesday. 

A U.S. court found on Tuesday a former bank executive guilty of bribery and of “corruptly using” his position to give millions of dollars in risky bank loans to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in exchange for a high-ranking position in the presidential administration.

U.S. federal prosecutors charged an Iranian intelligence official and three members of his network for a plot to kidnap a New York-based Iranian-American journalist, author and human rights activist critical of Iran, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday.

A high-level member of the hacker group known as FIN7 was sentenced June 24 to seven years in prison and ordered to pay US$2.5 million in restitution.

The Ohio State House ousted last week a lawmaker whom the FBI accused of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to pass legislation bailing out two nuclear plants.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last week that it intends to strengthen outdated regulations protecting poultry and hog farmers and cattle ranchers from “unfair, deceptive and anticompetitive” practices, according to a press release.

The transport business is often hijacked by organized crime – in particular the highly lucrative vehicle-towing industry – which gangs infiltrate across the U.S., Canada, Australia and South Africa through violence, intimidation and corruption, the Global Initiative Against Organized Crime warned.

Two individuals implicated in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal were charged on Thursday with engaging in a “back channel lobbying campaign” to influence the Trump administration and the U.S. Justice Department to drop the investigation and “have a Chinese dissident sent back to China.”

Although the FBI is trying to discourage ransomware payments to hacking groups, global meat supplier JBS said it paid US$11 million in Bitcoin in response to the May 30 REvil cyberattack which shut down the company’s North American and Australian systems.

Authorities from four countries shut down an online marketplace where vendors sold more than 80 million stolen login credentials to buyers, who frequently used them to make unauthorized transactions, including wire transfers, the U.S. Justice Departmentsaid on Thursday.

A group of U.S. lawmakers intend to introduce three bipartisan bills designed to curb kleptocracy and corruption worldwide. They say their proposals close gaps in existing laws concerning sanctions of corrupt individuals, address abuses to investor visa programs and allow visa bans to be imposed on corrupt individuals.

U.S. authorities repatriated 27 looted antiquities to Cambodia, most of which were confiscated from a Manhattan gallery whose owner was arrested in India.

U.S. authorities seized 63.7 Bitcoins worth US$2.3 million believed to be part of a ransom paid to an organized crime group known as DarkSide, which allegedly orchestrated the highly-disruptive attack on Colonial Pipeline last month.