Unknown assassins have killed the mayor of a municipality in the southeastern Mexican province of Michoacán, where several criminal cartels operate and seven of the nearly 50 political candidates countrywide have been murdered over the past year.

A Turkish drug trafficker with alleged ties to Hezbollah has been found living under a false identity in a Brazilian prison after escaping incarceration in neighboring Paraguay more than six years ago, police have told OCCRP.

The Israeli Parliament approved a bill that allows the government to temporarily close the offices of foreign broadcasters in the country if it believes that their reports pose a threat to national security. The law paves the way for the closure of Al Jazeera which has been irritating Israel with its extensive reporting from Gaza.

The Colombian Attorney General's Office announced on Thursday that law enforcement had dismantled a criminal network partly composed of National Police agents that smuggled textiles, footwear, cigarettes, and other goods through the port of Barranquilla on the country’s northern coast.

The U.S. indicted Tuesday the two Chinese founders of a crypto exchange platform for violating several anti-money laundering (AML) laws, which prosecutors said helped millions of criminals and terrorist financiers launder billions of dollars.

U.S. prosecutors are seeking the seizure of two luxury New York City apartments belonging to former Mongolian Prime Minister Sukhbaatar Batbold and his family, which they believe were purchased with the proceeds of illegally awarded mining contracts.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on 11 individuals and entities for aiding financial crimes, drug trafficking, and the exploitation of Syrian resources by the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad.

Amid a wave of violence and a declared war against drug trafficking, the National Police of Ecuador said officers found the mayor of a coastal town and her communications director shot dead inside a vehicle.

A Bishkek court ordered on Wednesday a one-month detention for the former deputy head of the Customs Service, who was extradited the night before from Azerbaijan where he fled after the exposure of his corrupt network that had spread throughout the government.

Authorities in Papua New Guinea are investigating how a China-born businesswoman accused of orchestrating a methamphetamine “black flight” was able to obtain PNG citizenship, the country’s immigration minister said, after OCCRP and partners revealed she appeared to have falsified key parts of her citizenship application.