Thousands South African workers and representatives of unions staged a countrywide general strike and hit the streets on Wednesday, demanding a stronger fight against rampant corruption which they say causes “more job losses, more poverty and more unemployment.”

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s chances to get hold of US$1.95 billion in gold stored in the Bank of England rose on Monday when a U.K. appeals courtoverturned a previous High Court ruling that stated the U.K. had recognized Maduro’s rival as the country’s president.

Police in Indonesia arrested three suspected members of an international crime syndicate that tricked an Italian company into paying 3.67 million euro (US$4.33 million) for non-existent medical equipment,Interpol said Tuesday.

Measures taken by governments to restrict the spread of the coronavirus have led to more sexual abuse cases and especially “children may be at an increased risk of sexual exploitation both online and offline,”Interpol warned on Monday.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned this week that corruption in times of the COVID-19 pandemic is more than just wasted money, and that in fact it erodes the social contract and corrodes the government’s ability to help grow the economy in a way that benefits all citizens.

Lithuanian authorities have launched an investigation into the procurement of Chinese-made protective face masks that, according to anOCCRP investigation, had fake certificates.

Law enforcement from 83 countries dismantled 19 organised crime groups and arrested 406 suspects during a six-month-long operation that targeted trafficking of counterfeit and substandard food and beverages, Europol said on Wednesday. 

TheU.S. Justice Department charged on Tuesday two Chinese hackers with targeting U.S. companies involved in the development of COVID-19 vaccines, testing technology, and treatments, with the intention of probing for vulnerabilities in their computer networks.

If governments fail to guard against fraud and bribery in health-care supply chains as they secure essential medicines and personal-protective equipment in the fight against COVID-19, human rights could be abused and lives could be lost, UN experts warned.

The judge who sent Nawaz Sharif behind bars for graft has been dismissed on Friday for violating the code of conduct, which paves the way for the former prime minister to be acquitted and for Pakistan’s political rift to deepen at a time the country is struggling with the coronavirus pandemic.

A bizarre black market business developed in Pakistan as desperate families of critical COVID-19 patients are offering thousands of dollars for blood plasma from recovered patients.

Some of Italy's leading mafia experts fear that the COVID-19 pandemic has only served to strengthen the mafia’s foothold across Italy, according to areport released by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC). 

In the first case of securities fraud related to COVID-19 to be brought before a US court, prosecutors charged the president of a California-based medical technology company with defrauding investors, manipulating stock prices and submitting fraudulent claims for allergy and coronavirus testing from which he allegedly made US$69 million.

Germanpolice are looking for witnesses of the theft of 400,000 masks from that what it described as a carefully planned carjacking that took place on Monday.

The number of banking Trojans and infostealers has gone up with the increase of mostly pandemic-related unemployment, according to a leading provider of cyber security solutions to governments and corporate enterprises globally.

The EU’s law enforcement agency (EUROPOL) launched on Friday a special unit that will try to help EU countries fight the increased number of criminal activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina ordered on Sunday the release of the prime minister of one of Bosnia’s two semi-autonomous regions who wasdetained late Thursday over his alleged involvement in the procurement of pricy, inadequate ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A doctor fell out of a hospital window in Russia after he complained that he was forced to work although he was positive for coronavirus, theMoscow Times reported Monday, noting he was the third to fall in the past two weeks.

With an increasing number of people around the world confined to their homes, measures designed to quell the spread of the coronavirus pandemic have resulted in an increase in people accessing child pornography.

After a shootout with a gang suspected of having tried to sell “unregistered lung ventilator devices” to a hospital near Moscow, Russian authorities said they detained seven people and seized nearly 2,000 counterfait ventilators.