Iran’s role as a key node in the smuggling routes for methamphetamines from Central and South-East Asia to Europe has left the country with a significant drug problem, a recent EU report found.

Croatian police confiscated nearly 600 kilograms of cocaine concealed in a shipment of bananas that arrived from South America to the Adriatic port of Ploče. Officials say that with increased controls in ports in Western and Northern Europe, organized crime seems to be looking for alternative routs in the south of the continent.

The European Union released on Monday a detailed report it publishes every four years outlining current and future threats serious and organized crime can pose to the EU, according to a press release.

Authorities in Romania said they fear that the chief of the so-called Riviera Maya gang, a criminal organization that stole more than a billion dollars by compromising ATMs across Mexican tourist destinations, might flee the Latin American country and escape justice.

A spokesperson of incarcerated Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said on Tuesday that police in Dagestan, Sankt Petersburg and Voronezh have detained several of his associates, members of the so-called Team Navalny, over the past two days.

Honduran authorities last week arrested Marco Bográn, the former head of an institution that purchased old and useless mobile hospitals at highly inflated prices for the Honduran government at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Italian authorities said they have arrested a 40-year-old man who allegedly hired a hitman on the dark web to cause life-changing injuries to his ex-girlfriend who had left him.

In a joint operation led by Interpol, police from 24 countries arrested 195 suspects of human trafficking and migrants smuggling and rescued 500 victims, including children, the international police organizatrion said on Friday.

A group suspected of kidnapping a fugitive Ukrainian ex-judge from Chisinau, Moldova, may have ties to Ukrainian intelligence and law enforcement, according to an investigation published by Slidstvo.info and RISE Moldova.

Since the pandemic has temporarily closed most pubs in the country, forcing Guinness to slow production, beer kegs have become a hot commodity in Ireland and organized crime is stepping in to fill the gap, the Journal reported.