#money-laundering

#money-laundering

The Italian financial police said they had seized more than $230 million in assets connected to the money laundering operations of the mobster, Matteo Messina Denaro, after an investigation spanning the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Monaco and more. Mr. Messina Denaro was a Sicilian gangster who for three decades eluded capture. He was finally caught under an assumed name at a cancer clinic in Palermo where he was receiving treatment in 2023. But when he died in custody months later, the Italian police still had few clues about his international investment empire.

Unlike the counterparties to his trades, Spagnuolo knew the outcome of these wagers before the trading public did because he had accessed Google's confidential, commercially valuable internal data. The complaint states that at the time Spagnuolo placed his bet in mid-October, Polymarket assigned a near-zero probability to D4vd being 'the #1 searched person on Google this year.' When Google published its year-end search data and D4vd came out as #1, Spagnuolo netted $1.2 million from the bet.

Italian authorities have seized more than $232m in assets linked to the late Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, targeting a network built on decades of drug trafficking and financial laundering. The operation announced on Thursday and led by Italy's financial police, the Guardia di Finanza, traced the funds across Europe and offshore jurisdictions, dismantling what officials described as a vast criminal fortune accumulated since the 1980s.

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have charged Michele Spagnuolo, a 36-year-old Google information-security engineer based in Switzerland, with using internal Google search-trend data to bet $2.7m on Polymarket and profit $1.2m on the prediction-market platform's 2025 Google Year-in-Search contracts.

Judge Raymond Finnegan accused Bendera Abekyamwale (25) of "poisoning children" who was only interested in making a "handy buck" when officers found over €4,000 of cannabis herb and almost €1,400 in cash following a planned search at The Oaks, Lough Na Glack, Carrickmacross, Monaghan on March 13 last year.

Zapatero, a socialist who served as prime minister from 2004 to 2011, has been ordered to appear before Spain's highest criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, on 2 June. Although other former and serving Spanish prime ministers have been called to testify in corruption cases, this is the first time a former prime minister has been placed under criminal investigation. The latest investigation is part of an investigation into the 53m (46m) state rescue of the Spanish airline Plus Ultra in March 2021.

Last week the party told the BBC the Reform UK leader bought the house in Surrey in 2024 without a mortgage by using his fee from appearing on I'm A Celebrity. In 2025, Mr Farage told the FT that fee had been paid to his company Thorn In The Side Limited. However, the company accounts appear to suggest the income he received remained in his account after the house purchase.

Oybek Jabbarov and his wife Fatime, who live in Ireland, were accused of transferring money out of the country

The investigation found Plahotniuc received more than $43 million from companies controlled by another oligarch, Ilan Shor, who had previously fled to Russia and was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison.

The FCA's enforcement action targeted unregistered peer-to-peer crypto traders, emphasizing that these operations are illegal and pose significant financial crime risks. Steve Smart stated, 'We will use our powers and work with partners to disrupt them.'

The Supreme Court said the case highlighted the application of free speech laws in Sweden. The statements made by the bank director in the interviews were responses to questions of an investigative journalistic nature.

The defendant accepted illegal proceeds while being aware of circumstances indicating their connection to drug-related offenses. The judge noted the severe social harm caused by narcotics crimes and the need for strict punishment.

Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, has dropped its defamation claim against the Guardian and two other defendants regarding a report on federal investigations into $8 million in payments.

Guests were promised luxury villas in a crypto resort in Timor-Leste, but an investigation found only an empty plot, raising questions about the project's legitimacy.

The investigation was triggered in 2015 following a complaint from Catherine Hutin, the daughter of Picasso's last partner Jacqueline Roque, after she discovered that works were missing from the unit she had rented from Bouvier's company, in a Paris suburb. Eight years before, she had asked Olivier Thomas, an art dealer and mutual friend of hers and Bouvier's, to sell Picasso's last residence on the Riviera, the Mas Notre-Dame-de-Vie in Mougins, and move the furniture to the storage unit.

The Hungarian tax authority has just confirmed it detained seven people and two cash-in-transit vehicles coming from Austria towards Ukraine, saying it is pursuing criminal proceedings on suspicion of money laundering. The contents of their transit has also been confirmed as per earlier statement by Ukraine's state-owned Oschadbank. But the authority pointedly said that one of the seven men arrested was a former general of the Ukrainian intelligence services.