The UN's 2026 World Drug Report finds cocaine production above 4,000 tonnes and 331 million drug users worldwide, as Europe cements its place as the second-largest cocaine market and laundered profits seep into the legal economy.
Europol's second mapping of the EU's most threatening criminal networks identifies 731 groups dominating drugs and fraud, with 85% abusing legal businesses to launder and conceal proceeds.
A 41-year-old Italian woman has been arrested in Rome under a Luxembourg arrest warrant, accused of helping launder more than €61 million stolen from Caritas Luxembourg. The detention is the latest in a widening international inquiry into the gravest institutional scandal in the Grand Duchy's recent memory.
An arrest near Rome has pushed the embezzlement scandal at Caritas Luxembourg back into the spotlight. Roughly €61.2 million vanished from the charity in 2024 through a 'fake president' fraud, and the cross-border investigation has since produced arrests and convictions in several countries, 54 asset-freezing orders, and a record regulatory fine for a Luxembourg bank.
Italian police have arrested Clarissa La Porta, a 41-year-old accused of helping to launder the roughly €61 million embezzled from Caritas Luxembourg, in the latest cross-border turn of the country's largest charity-fraud scandal. Detained in Rome on a European Arrest Warrant from Luxembourg, she faces forgery, fraud, criminal-association and money-laundering charges and awaits possible extradition. She is presumed innocent.