The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)

Even after authorities seized more than $95 million worth of antiquities from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in recent years, the institution still holds hundreds more pieces linked to alleged looting and trafficking figures, a new analysis by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has found.

The Kazakh government is claiming in a confidential arbitration that international oil giants awarded $10.7 billion in contracts at the Kashagan oil field which had been compromised by self-dealing or unjustified cost increases, or were won through bribery, multiple sources have told ICIJ.

Boxing promoter Daniel Kinahan has been charged with directing the activities of a criminal organization after being extradited from Dubai to his native Ireland amid a huge security operation. Authorities allege that Kinahan, 49, oversaw a global narco-trafficking operation that was tied to a bloody gang war in Ireland that resulted in numerous killings.

Tether, which mints the world’s most widely used crypto token, is likely one of the most valuable private companies on earth, with an estimated value of $200 billion, exceeding the total share value of McDonald’s. The company’s token, known as USDT, is a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar that has become the backbone of a parallel banking system pervading parts of the world.

Cancer drugs in India are getting new safety features to improve tracing and curb the spread of counterfeits. Manufacturers of all cancer drugs sold in India have until July to add a QR code or barcode to their packaging that shows the medicine’s path from factory to patient, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The United Nations paid roughly $10 million last year to companies formerly linked to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, according to an ICIJ analysis of recently released U.N. data. The payments came after Assad’s ouster from power in December 2024. The procurement data, released by the U.N. in July, reveals at least 11 companies that reportedly had been closely linked to the Assad regime, and which continued to receive U.N. contracts after its fall.

Recent moves by cryptocurrency exchange HTX could soften the blow of new sanctions on the firm, experts warn, including a European Union ban on transactions. One of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, HTX is closely associated with the crypto billionaire Justin Sun, who was a primary booster of the Trump family’s digital currency business before the relationship recently soured.

Maria trusted that she had stumbled onto a second chance at love. From her home in Nicosia, Cyprus, she spent nearly two years on a dating platform exchanging photos, voice messages, letters and late-night thoughts on travel, children, art and love on the AmoLatina dating site with Dan, 45. Dan said that he had a degree in finance and a passion for photography, and that he was a divorced Brazilian living in Argentina with a 20-year-old son.

As scammers and terrorists increasingly turn to crypto, a Canadian intelligence office is raising alarms about risks posed by an emerging industry in the country offering discreet means to convert cryptocurrency to large sums of physical cash and vice versa.

Swedbank has agreed to pay a $50 million fine to New York’s state financial regulator to settle a money laundering case tied to the Panama Papers. The Swedish group reached the settlement with the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), which first launched the investigation in 2019. The probe was into the bank’s anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing controls, and its disclosures to regulators between 2007 and 2019, according to a statement by Swedbank.