Fraud

Michael Shvartsman was convicted of insider trading, while Eric Hannelius settled without admitting or denying guilt. Both men were involved in a company with contracts to track legal marijuana in Florida and other states.

Senior Airbus executives corresponded with an intermediary for controversial helicopter deals in Kuwait after the European company came under scrutiny for its dealings with middlemen, emails obtained by reporters show.

Iraq’s Dollar Auction: The ‘Monster’ Funneling Billions to Fraudsters and Militants Through the U.S. Federal Reserve Source link

For a decade and a half, Syria’s “under-20” soccer teams routinely outperformed the national squad in big tournaments. An investigation by OCCRP and its partners found that dozens of players’ ages were understated — some by as much as five or six years.

U.S. prosecutors plan to feature a wealthy Romanian businessman, convicted of corruption charges in his home country, in the upcoming tax fraud trial of Hunter Biden, the son of the U.S. president, according to court records.

Beny Steinmetz’s company obtained iron ore deposits worth billions thanks to bribes paid to the wife of a West African president. As revelations of the corruption mounted, and Steinmetz came under pressure in courts around the world, he and his firms struck a series of deals with companies connected to Greek businessman Sabby Mionis. The deals helped Steinmetz protect his assets and fight back against adversaries.

Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov has drastically decreased transparency into public spending, even as he has launched an ambitious new series of state projects intended to show off his government’s power. But behind the scenes, the projects are being implemented by companies owned by people who appear to be close to the president himself.

In February a Maltese court annulled a 2.1-billion-euro public healthcare contract over suspicion of fraud. Financial records obtained by reporters show the people behind the contract used company accounts to buy personal and luxury items, and funneled millions of euros to themselves and relatives under the guise of loans and other payments.

Not long after imposing sanctions on wood imports from Russia and Belarus, Europe saw an influx of wood supposedly coming from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Authorities say sanctions-busters are increasingly mislabeling wood as Central Asian so they can keep bringing it in to the EU.

For more than a decade, HS Timber Group required its Romanian timber suppliers to deliver extra wood for free without recording it, netting the Austrian company an estimated $34 million of unofficial timber.