The U.K. Labor party called for “urgent clarity” over the £470 million (US$624.35 million) it found to have been doled out by the government for ten COVID-19 contracts to companies that are either listed, or have a parent company, in a tax haven, it said in a Thursday press release.

The U.K.Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said it has secured nearly £1.2 million (US$1.58 million) last week from the Brazilian owner of a luxury apartment in West London, which is believed to have been purchased with money stemming from Latin America’s biggest corruption scandal, Brazil’sOperation Car Wash.

Most journalists who took part in a survey conducted by the Foreign Policy Center said they were threatened or harassed while investigating financial crime or corruption, the U.K.-based international affairs think tank revealed on Monday.

A Malaysian subsidiary ofGoldman Sachs pleaded guilty Thursday to charges in a scheme to pay more than US$1 billion in bribes to Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials to obtain lucrative business.

Despite a law requiring the U.K. government to publish details on all COVID-19 contracts, roughly £3 billion (US$3.92bn) doled out to private companies remains concealed, according to the Good Law Project, a non-profit organization that takes on public interest legal cases.

In what is being described as a landmark case, the U.K.’s National Crime Agency, NCA, relied on an Unexplained Wealth Order to seize millions in property and assets from a businessman with alleged ties to organized crime. 

Romanian police uncovered a number of rare books, including first editions of Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton from the 16th and 17th century as well as other priceless historical antiques, that were stolen in 2017 from a warehouse in west London’s Feltham,Europol said on Friday.

In an effort to take the United Kingdom out of one of the deepest recessions of any major economy following the pandemic, the country’s government has injected billions in public funds into corporations embroiled in financial and human rights scandals, Vice reported on Tuesday.

The British crown dependency has registered over 1,000 private jets while offering liberal tax loopholes for the wealthy.

The United Kingdom’s Financial Reporting Council announced on Wednesday that it would investigate the audits of two “Big Four” accounting firms for their failure to spot the collapse of London Capital & Finance (LC&F), which left over 11,400 investors facing losses of at least £230 million (US$ 285 million).

More than half of the £4.4 billion (US$5.48 billion) worth of foreign-owned Scottish property can be traced to companies that are registered in tax havens, Scottish investigative news outlet The Ferret revealed on Sunday after gaining access to data from the country’s public registers. 

A British non-profit filed a lawsuit against the UK government for awarding a 108 million pounds (US$136 million) contract for purchasing COVID-19 protective equipment to a small pest-control company from Sussex that has 16 employees - a move they see as dubious.

As a key part of an anti-money laundering initiative in 2016, the U.K. started requiring all British firms to publish information on who owns them, but a new report published on Saturday by openDemocracy shows that nearly 400,000 U.K. companies don’t know or won’t say who that is.

The family of Azerbaijan’s former security chief has built up a business and property empire in Europe worth over 100 million euros

Credit: Svetlana Tiourina

Moldovan authorities accused two current, two former officials of the National Bank of being involved in a US$1 billion theft from three banks, theOffice of the Prosecutor Generalannounced.

A group led by the CEO of an Indian pharmaceutical company was convicted on Thursday for running a massive anabolic steroid distribution network, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) reported Friday. 

Organized crime groups are poised to take advantage of a possible no-deal Brexit that would leave the UK’s borders vulnerable to fraud, smuggling and criminal activity, a government watchdog is warning.

A UK court will allow the case of Ukraine's PrivatBank to proceed, opening the door for the bank to recover nearly US$ 3 billion in frozen assets, which it says were stolen by its previous owners.

UK authorities arrested 13 members of an international organized crime group accused of importing 50 tonnes of drugs worth billions of pounds  from the Netherlands over a period of 18 months, the National Crime Agency announced Wednesday.

The UK National Crime Agency froze on Wednesday eight bank accounts with more than £100 million (US$ 121,004,893) it suspects were obtained through corruption and bribery in an overseas nation.