The founders of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers scandal, were arrested in Panama City on Thursday as the country’s attorney general launched a probe into their alleged connections with Brazil’s sprawling Lava Jato corruption scandal.

Credit guarantees worth hundreds of millions of pounds given to Rolls-Royce by the government to help it win export deals are being investigated to see whether the engineering giant obtained them fraudulently.

Civil servants are examining support given by UK Export Finance to (UKEF) the company to help it land foreign sales, after Rolls last month admitted using bribes to seal overseas contracts.

Government officials in Norway have been breached by a phishing attack which authorities promptly pinned on 'Russian hackers,' claiming the hack was allegedly traced back to the same culprits that compromised the DNC servers in the US last year.

The US government has blacklisted 13 individuals and a dozen businesses under the Iran sanctions authority, a day after President Donald Trump’s administration threatened a response over Tehran’s ballistic missile tests.

One of the most honest places on the planet is in the grip of a financial crime wave.

In the last month alone, Sweden has opened probes into possible wrongdoing by a billionaire, a former finance minister, the national property board, a former tech CEO and one of his company’s directors. The alleged crimes range from insider trading to bribery, the same accusation that’s embroiled wireless-carrier giant Telia AB in legal disputes for years.

Switzerland’s financial regulator fined Coutts & Co for violating money-laundering rules and illegally profiting from transactions associated with 1Malaysia Development Bhd, prompting Swiss prosecutors to review the decision to see if the bank should face a criminal investigation.

A former HBOS banker and five other financiers have been jailed for their part in a £245m loans scandal.

Lynden Scourfield was sentenced to 11 years and three months, while consultant David Mills was jailed for 15 years.

Judge Martin Beddoe said Scourfield "sold his soul" to Mills in exchange for "sex", "bling" and "for swag".

Romania’s prime minister has refused to repeal decrees that critics say will free corrupt officials from jail early and shield others from conviction, despite international condemnation and the biggest popular protests since the fall of communism.

French conservative François Fillon has suffered new setbacks to his presidential candidacy, with prosecutors expanding an embezzlement probe into his wife’s paid political job to include two of their children. 

An old interview, meanwhile, is coming back to haunt his wife, Penelope. 

Rome's mayor Virginia Raggi, once a rising star of the anti-establishment Five-Star movement, was questioned by prosecutors on Thursday in an abuse of office probe as fresh allegations of corruption emerged.

The Five Stars (M5S) - which considers itself the antithesis to corrupt political parties - is pushing for an early general election in Italy and Raggi's potential fall is worrying many who fear it may suffer in the polls.