Featured Bulgaria

Enduring Italians, Ambitious Albanians – How Cocaine is Changing Europe’s Criminal Landscape

By Chris Dalby, InSight Crime, 21 September 2021 InSight Crime — Ever greater quantities of cocaine are making their way across the Atlantic and are being sold at ever greater prices across Europe. A new Europol report reveals how this has changed the way organized crime operates… Read More

U.S. Sanctions on Bulgaria Forcing Government to Fight Corruption, Prime Minister Says

U.S. sanctions on Bulgarian officials and businesses are forcing the government to fight corruption, the country’s interim Prime Minister Stefan Yanev said Monday. Yanev said that Bulgaria cannot have a “stable political system” without solving corruption in the country after the U.S. Treasury Department put sanctions on three Bulgarian officials… Read More

U.S. Sanctions Bulgarian Power Broker, Gambling Tycoon Over Corruption

The United States has sanctioned three Bulgarian individuals, including a power broker and a gambling tycoon, and dozens of companies they allegedly own or control for their “extensive roles” in corruption in the Southeast European country. The Department of the Treasury said in a statement on June 2… Read More

27th May 2021

404 Beneficial Owner Not Found: Are EU Public Registers in Place and Really Public?

That anonymous shell companies are the vehicle of choice for the corrupt and criminals is no longer a secret. New cases of cross-border corruption and money laundering are reported almost on a weekly basis, where perpetrators often hide behind secretive corporate structures. The European Union has been lauded for its… Read More

1st April 2021

Credit Suisse lurches from one risk management crisis to the next

Credit Suisse’s chief executive had a blunt message for his bank: it has “an attitude to risk that has to change . . . there has to be consequences”. But it was not Thomas Gottstein speaking this week after the Swiss lender warned of huge losses on trades with its client Archegos Capital Management. Read More

24th February 2021

Congo-Brazzaville Strongman Buys Secret Weapons Haul from Azerbaijan

By Khadija Sharife and Mark Anderson, OCCRP, 22 February 2021 OCCRP — In January 2020, at the Turkish port of Derince on the eastern shores of the Sea of Marmara, a huge cache of weapons was loaded onto the MV Storm. Registered in the tax haven of Vanuatu,… Read More

18th February 2021

Austrian authorities allege ex-IDF intel officer ‘mastermind’ behind €200m scam

An Israeli man who founded a binary options trading platform has been named by Austrian authorities as one of the masterminds of a massive “pan-European” fraud scheme. Austria’s Ministry of the Interior, which oversees police and public security, has cited Israeli citizen Ilan Tzorya, founder of the binary options platform… Read More

14th January 2021

Italy’s largest mafia trial in three decades to begin against ‘Ndrangheta

Italy’s largest mafia trial in three decades will begin on Wednesday, with 900 witnesses testifying against more than 350 people, including politicians and officials charged with being members of the powerful ’Ndrangheta. A high-security 1,000-capacity courtroom with cages to hold the defendants has been built by Italian authorities in the… Read More

23rd December 2020

Haulier Thomas Maher’s wealth exposed international drug cartel links

A major figure in the organised crime world who went undetected for two decades before being exposed by his lavish lifestyle has been jailed. Thomas Maher, 40, an Irish haulier who lived in Warrington, Cheshire, was described by the National Crime Agency (NCA) as a “professional facilitator” for crime gangs… Read More

18th December 2020

Credit Suisse Charged Over Money Laundering in Cocaine Ring

Credit Suisse Group AG and one of its former bank managers have been indicted by Swiss prosecutors over the lender’s alleged failure to prevent money laundering by a Bulgarian drug ring. The Zurich-based bank failed to take all the organizational measures that were “reasonable and required” to guard against… Read More

1st December 2020

New EU Prosecutor’s Office Takes Aim at 50-Billion-Euro-a-Year ‘Carousel Fraud’ Schemes

By Will Neal, OCCRP, 30 November 2020 OCCRP — OCCRP spoke with the head of the new European Public Prosecutor’s Office about the challenges in fighting the widespread — but often-ignored — criminal scheme. “No one’s interested in value-added tax. It’s just not sexy enough.” There’s an edge of… Read More

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