Tensions remain high in the contested North African territory of Western Sahara ever since an incident at the end of last year threatened to break the 30-year ceasefire and disturb the established drug trade routes.

Gold-smugglers’ wigs, horse doping, sweet ecstasy, sentencing for the admiral of a fleet of narco-submarines, and the Girl Scout with her hand in the cookie jar ― welcome to your regular roundup of the weirdest events in corruption and organized crime, from us here at OCCRP’s Daily News team.

Methamphetamine is taking over illicit markets across East and Southern Africa, as established “Mexican Meth” from Nigeria competes with newer “Pakistani Meth” from Afghanistan for control of the regional drug trade, according to a report released Thursday.

Authorities in the Philippines have launched an investigation against nearly 30 immigration officers for their alleged role in the trafficking of dozens of women to Syria where the victims were underpaid and abused.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) orchestrated for decades the theft of millions of rubles of oil from trucks and pipelines in the country’s top oil producing region claims a new investigation by Radio Free Europe. 

Malaysian customs officials said on Tuesday that they have seized captagon pills worth US$1.2 billion that were hidden in trolley tires, making it the biggest drug haul ever recorded in the country.

A Bucharest court issued a warrant on Wednesday for the arrest of Florian Tudor, the alleged chief of the so-called Riviera Maya Gang which stole more than a billion dollars by skimming credit cards belonging mainly to tourists visiting Mexico and withdrawing money from their accounts.

Combined with the ongoing normalisation of regional instability and violence, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought on new opportunities for criminal expansion in the Levant, where illicit activity could become a “permanent and pervasive fixture,” experts say.

German lawmaker and member of the ruling Christian Democratic Union, Karin Strenz, died on Saturday while traveling privately from Cuba to Germany. Strenz was implicated in the Azerbaijani Laundromat, a EU-wide lobbying and money laundering scheme revealed by OCCRP in 2017.

During his traditional public Angelus prayer address on Sunday, Pope Francis spoke out against organized crime and its use of the COVID-19 pandemic to enrich itself.