The United States government slapped sanctions on Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami for playing “a significant role in international narcotics trafficking,” the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said Monday.

Deutsche Bank said Monday it will pay US$ 625 million to US and UK financial authorities to settle charges that it helped Russian investors launder up to US$ 10 billion.

A Nevada-based casino company agreed to pay a nearly US$ 7 million criminal penalty to settle a corruption investigation into dubious payments it made to a consultant who was helping the company promote its brand in China and Macau.

Western Union has agreed to pay US$ 586 million for willingly allowing criminals to use its services for money laundering and fraud, federal authorities announced Thursday.

The brother and nephew of former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon were charged Tuesday with trying to bribe a Middle Eastern official into a real estate deal worth US$ 800 million, according to the Department of Justice.

Financial giants Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse stated on Friday they were willing to pay more than US$ 12 billion to settle United States investigations into the sale of toxic mortgage-backed securities of the type that helped cause the 2008 global financial crisis.

Two Brazil-based companies have agreed to pay a record-breaking US$ 3.5 billion in fines to settle charges that they paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes as part of the South American country’s massive Petrobras scandal, the United States Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

Spokesmen for United States president-elect Donald Trump and Argentine President Mauricio Macri have both denied a claim by a senior Argentine journalist that Trump asked Macri for a business favor on a phone call between the two men.

A jury in New York found two relatives of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro guilty on Friday of attempting to import 800 kilograms of cocaine into the United States.

Investment bank JPMorgan Chase reached a settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday to pay US$ 264 million over its practice of giving jobs to the family members of Chinese officials and lawmakers.

A court in the United States ruled on Monday to disqualify lawyers representing a firm connected to the Magnitsky fraud case, after they had switched sides to defend a company accused of money laundering.

 Accused of involvement in stealing billions from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, Prime Minister Najib Razak did what autocratic leaders around the world do when scandal is in the air. He cleared house.

US and Dutch authorities are seeking a record US$ 1.4 billion settlement from Nordic telecommunications firm Telia Company to resolve allegations of large-scale bribery during the company’s entry into Uzbekistan in 2007, the company said Thursday.

Kosovo has granted the rights to search for coal over one-third of its territory to a company linked to retired US General Wesley Clark, an investigation by Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) partner the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) has found.

Reporters for OCCRP have found evidence that pro-Kremlin agents are using an online petition tool on www.whitehouse.gov, a US presidential website, in an attempt to covertly influence US policy.

A closer look at the effort gives a better understanding how trolls are used to propagandize Russian citizens with misinformation about the West.

United Kingdom officials successfully intervened to have the United States drop plans to prosecute HSBC for allowing narcotics traffickers and US sanction targets to move money through the bank, according to a US congressional report released Monday.  

Security experts and Democratic National Committee (DNC) members said that cybercriminals broke into the DNC network last summer and tracked communications, while another group infiltrated the network in April and downloaded opposition research files on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, the Washington Post reported.

The US Department of Justice said Friday that Amin Yu pled guilty to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government and conspiring to commit money laundering in a case where submarine technology was stolen and sent to a state-run Chinese university.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has announced a near total ban on the domestic commercial trade of African ivory by limiting imports, exports and sales across state lines.

A decorated US military officer was sentenced on Friday to 78 months in prison for passing along classified information in a bribery case that has shaken the Navy, the Associated Press (AP) reported.