Corrupt politicians are churning out books to reduce their sentences THE makers of the Romanian edition of the board game Monopoly may want to consider altering the “Get out of jail free” card to one reading “Wrote a book in jail”. A change in the law in 2013 allows convicts to claim 30 days off […]

Romania is a modern European state, but it has one of the EU’s worst corruption problems – a problem that has stained politics and public life for decades and undermined faith in government and state institutions. One leading Romanian activist told Al Jazeera: “This country has suffered for many, many years because of important people […]

Time may be running out for Macedonia’s Euro-Atlantic integration dreams. A mediator charged with moving the process along says it has stalled because the  country’s two main political parties have failed to implement a political agreement made in June that was intended to resolve this year’s deepening political crisis. The crisis erupted when the opposition […]

If they are pro-western they are called magnates; if they are pro-Russian, they are called oligarchs. They seem to be detrimental to democratic governance either way. The arrest of the former Prime Minister of Moldova, Vlad Filat, on Thursday, October 15th, has hardly appeased public opinion. They were not appeased by the resignation of the […]

Phone conversations posted online on Tuesday purported to show former Moldovan prime minister Vlad Filat asking for bribes from a local businessman, who has been accused along with Filat of involvement in the theft of $1 billion from three banks. Filat was detained by police on Thursday over a possible connection to the fraud which […]

Serbian minister says the government has decided to withdraw a controversial clause in the law, blocking public access to information on investments. Serbian Economy Minister Zeljko Sertic on Tuesday said the government would amend the draft law on investment, which initially foresaw that the government could deny access to information of public interest to journalists […]

A Croatian Court has rejected an attempt to post bail by Ivo Sanader, the former Croatian Prime Minister who stands accused of siphoning off state-owned assets through a private marketing firm during his term in office, among other charges. Sanader – the main figure in a series of high-level corruption, war profiteering and kickback cases […]

Sinisa Mali, the powerful mayor of the Serbian capital of Belgrade and a close associate of Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, is the director of two offshore companies that own 19 resort apartments worth about US$ 6.1 million on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, reporters for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and […]

Evidence of corruption that Vlad Filat was charged with have also been found in searches at his home and office. Classified documents have been found during searches at the house of former Prime Minister of Moldova Vlad Filat arrested on suspicion of corruption, a public prosecutor of the National Anti-Corruption Centre told a news conference […]

The Albanian government launches news website to ‘correct false media reports’, but analysts recommend focusing on transparency instead. The Albania Government has created its own website to correct what it describes as false or biased news reports published by online news portals or disseminated by the opposition Democratic Party. The move has caused some concern […]