More than 30 suspects were apprehended last week in a multinational operation targeting a highly violent criminal group from the Western Balkans. The group was involved in large-scale drug and weapon trafficking across Europe.

Croatian authorities launched on Friday a criminal investigation into the disappearance of a luxury yacht from an Adriatic port close to Split, where it was kept as part of Western sanctions imposed on Russian oligarchs close to Putin.

New documents confirm previous investigations byOštro and OCCRP that Mihajlo Perenčević, a Croatian businessman sanctioned due to his important strategic business in Russia, has extensive financial ties to a major Croatian tourism developer with a portfolio of property and assets worth some 200 million euros (US$207.95 million).

A court in Zagreb ordered on Monday five people who were arrested over the weekend to remain in detention on suspicion of defrauding Croatia’s main oil and gas company INA of more than a billion Croatian kunas (US$133 million) by reselling the company’s gas abroad for 10 times the purchase price and keeping the difference for themselves.

The U.K. government added last week a Croatian businessman to its list of persons and companies designated over the war in Ukraine and support for the regime in Moscow.

Croatian police arrested 10 people suspected of being part of a violent criminal network that brought cocaine from South America to Europe. Simultaneously, police in neighboring Serbia again arrested Serbian cocaine king Darko Šarić, who appears to have been cooperating with the group in Croatia.

A Croatian court ordered a one-month detention for the country’s former construction minister who has been accused of illegally distributing 2.6 million kuna (US$392,000) in grants to entrepreneurs from ethnic minorities who did not qualify for subsidies.

Croatian police reported Tuesday that they have confiscated a record amount of drugs — roughly 62 kilos of cocaine and 220 kilograms of heroin — in the country’s southern port of Ploče in two separate operations in October and November.

In 2009, a man known as “Putin’s masseur” bought a luxury villa on a Croatian island. The Pandora Papers show that behind the scenes a former Russian energy minister was playing a key role.

For years, Croatians have been in the dark about who owns a major company called Jadranka, the leading tourism developer on the Adriatic island of Lošinj. New documents reveal it to be controlled by the family of Mihajlo Perenčević, president of the Russian pipeline constructor Velesstroy.

A whistleblower, who exposed corruption unfolding beneath the surface of a global oil company, touched down in his hometown of Southampton on Tuesday after being detained in Croatia for over a year on an Interpol Red Notice issued after the company sued him.

Several close associates of Zagreb’s former mayor, including the head of the state media HRT, were arrested in Croatia on suspicion of corruption, bribery and abuse of power.

Corruption is rising in Croatia, as is the number of people leaving the country and the two trends are connected, says a new report released to the Croatian media this week and shared with OCCRP on Wednesday.

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.

Hungarian authorities said they dismantled an organized crime group believed to have deprived the Hungarian budget of more than 8.2 million euros (cca. US$9.6 million) in unpaid taxes using a sophisticated and intricate value-added tax fraud mechanism known as ‘carousel fraud.'

A Croatian courtsentenced on Friday the country’s former Prime MinisterIvo Sanader to eight years in prison for syphoning state-owned assets through a private marketing company, keeping some of it for himself and putting the rest into his party’s secret slush fund while he was in office.

Pakistan and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s officials on Wednesday signed in Islamabad an agreement that allows the Balkan country to send back home thousands of illegal Pakistani migrants that got stuck there on their way to western Europe.

Spanish police arrested three Croatian nationals when they intercepted their sailboat in the Spanish waters near La Palma carrying a total of 980 packages or nearly a ton of high-quality cocaine,Guardia Civil said in a statement on Saturday.

Croatian authorities seized on Saturday nearly 25 kilograms of cocaine after a police dog sniffed the drugs out during a routine traffic control near the southern coastal city of Ploče. The drugs have an estimated street value of HRK17 million (US$2.5 million),police said.

A recent probe by an international environmental watchdog has found that European companies are importing possibly illegal shipments of teak - a highly valuable wood much sought after for the building of luxury yachts.