Romania’s anticorruption prosecutors decided to arrest Bucharest District 2 mayor Neculai Ontanu on bribery charges, on Wednesday, March 23.     Ontanu will stay in police custody for 24 hours and the prosecutors have asked the court to approve a 30-day arrest warrant on his name. He is the fifth of the seven mayors in […]

Bulgarian politician and media mogul Delyan Peevski says he is pulling out of future business projects, blaming a ‘continuous media campaign’ against him. Bulgarian MP, businessman and media mogul Delyan Peevski – who was recently called “the iceberg of corruption in Bulgaria” by Germany’s Der Spiegel – is giving up on business projects in Bulgaria, […]

Estimate of total annual loss more than eight times higher than previous calculations. Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia are the most corrupt countries in the EU, according to a new European Parliament study which reveals that corruption throughout Europe is costing almost £800 billion a year. The staggering sum, which equates to 6.3 per cent of overall […]

Serbian police have detained 46 people, including 15 traffic policemen, on charges of corruption and money laundering. The suspects allegedly caused millions of euros of damage to the state budget.     The people arrested in the nation-wide sweep include a judge, a small town-mayor, and a number of former and serving public officials, Serbian […]

After its first six months of investigating high-level crime, Macedonia’s new Special Prosecution is on the right track despite facing serious obstructions, observers believe. With 30 cases under investigation and 80 suspects being probed for crimes ranging from election-rigging to large-scale bribery and tax evasion, the Special Prosecution is fulfilling its assigned task of digging […]

Former prime minister Victor Ponta denied the accusations against him in the first court heating of his corruption trial on March 18. Ponta is on trial on 17 counts of forgery, as well as money-laundering and complicity in tax evasion.   Ponta was the first Romanian prime minister to be indicted while still in office, […]

The Constitutional Court in Macedonia struck down a law yesterday which blocked the president from pardoning perpetrators of certain crimes including election fraud, according to the Macedonian media. The decision comes in the midst of an investigation into alleged vote rigging by, among others, members of former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s cabinet. The law change […]

Ministers and representatives from the 41 State Parties to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention have reaffirmed their commitment to continued implementation of the Convention and called for robust enforcement of their anti-foreign bribery laws. They also formally launched the fourth phase of country evaluations by the OECD Working Group on Bribery at the OECD Anti-Bribery Ministerial […]

The OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, in co-operation with the Ministry of Security of BiH, today concluded a specialized course for more than 30 security sector representatives from across the country on building integrity in this sector. The course covered the country’s security policy and ways of building capacities to minimize the risk of […]

The head of the Police Office for Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime has been dismissed.   The new government is continuing with dismissals of high-ranking officials, and the latest one is Mario Bertina, head of the National Police Office for Suppression of Corruption and Organized Crime (PNUSKOK), report Večernji List and Jutarnji List on […]