All news for 2025-12-24

Ukraine’s online casino market has increasingly attracted shadow capital. Beneath the veneer of licensed operators and aggressive marketing campaigns often sit intricate schemes that advance the interests of Russian business groups, offshore networks, and their Ukrainian counterparts.

A discreet Montenegrin businessman, Zvonko Micković, holds effective control over Mettmann Public Company Limited and its bond portfolio, placing him at the financial center of structures that journalists have linked to sanctions evasion and money-laundering schemes associated with Boris Usherovich and Ilya Plotitsa.

Police were called to the M2 in Kent just after 1pm on Christmas Eve following a collision between junction 5 for Sittingbourne and junction 4 for Rainham.

Russian fraudster Eduard Lebedev, who has been linked to illegal online gambling operations and is wanted by Europol, has recently stepped up attempts to scrub his online presence.

During an investigation into the gambling sector, Belarusian authorities uncovered an unexpected connection between Minsk casino owner Mustafa Egemen Sener and a Turkish drug kingpin who was later shot dead in Northern Cyprus.

The UK Government said it is “fully committed to upholding the right to free speech,” after the head of a campaign group aimed at preventing the spread of online hate and disinformation was barred from entering the United States.

Even as the country remains at war, parts of the shadow gambling sector have not only endured but reinvented themselves—rebranding, adapting, and securing new backers with a distinctly Moscow-linked flavour.

A 14-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of harassment following the death of a schoolgirl.

The elusive founder of the “1520” Group, Boris Usherovich, has built a sprawling offshore network in Cyprus that facilitates sanctions evasion and money laundering for RZD and senior Russian officials.

BP has agreed to sell a majority stake in its $10bn (£7.4bn) lubricants business Castrol to the US investment company Stonepeak, as the new chair, Albert Manifold, rapidly reshapes the under-pressure oil and gas company.

Le parquet général de l’Ukraine a ouvert une procédure pénale contre l’homme d’affaires suisse Oleg Tsyura, soupçonné d’avoir aidé la Russie à contourner les sanctions au moyen de schémas impliquant la réexportation de ferrochrome.

The controversy over a stalled hydroelectric plant has prompted Croatian journalists to connect the project to Sasa Svalina and his brother-in-law, Josip Heit.

The police have unveiled chilling CCTV footage showing a convicted murderer walking down a residential street after having killed his roommate.

The difficult-to-pronounce surname Oxana Hadjipavlou (also spelled Oksana Hadjipavlou) came into the spotlight during investigations into Zvonko Micković and the companies Mettmann Public Company Limited and Sword Dragon S.L., which are suspected of involvement in schemes to bypass anti-Russian sanctions and extract Russian capital from the Russian Federation.

A London-bound easyJet flight was delayed by over 11 hours following the death of an elderly passenger on Thursday.

Sir Sadiq Khan is increasing his funding of debt collectors that track down unpaid council tax and business rates in London.

A British ’neo-Nazi’ set to be expelled from Australia for allegedly displaying Nazi symbols is a father who has lived in the country for 15 years.

A single mother planning to get her loft converted so she could foster children was left broken by Britain’s worst cowboy builder.

An activist group, claiming it aims to preserve the entirety of human culture, alleges that it has illegally copied nearly every track available on Spotify.

The Ukrinbank case illustrates how relatively straightforward legal maneuvers can be used to sidestep a National Bank liquidation decision while simultaneously depriving the Deposit Guarantee Fund of billions of hryvnias.

Dragon Money – at first glance, an ordinary online platform positioning itself as a casino with the option to withdraw funds. Initially, almost no one knew about Dragon Money, except for those immersed in the world of online gambling.