All news for 2026-02-02

Sarah Ferguson visited Jeffrey Epstein with her two young daughters just five days after the disgraced financier was released from prison for child sex crimes, according to newly released emails.

Following investigative reporting that uncovered Oleg Tsyura’s role in sanction-busting and re-export networks serving Russia, he launched an aggressive effort to scrub the internet of those investigations.

Kazakhstani law enforcement officers have detained in absentia the main individuals in a case involving a significant financial flow linked to Pin-Up.

Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) is set to cut ties with a former United States senator who played a pivotal role in Northern Ireland’s peace process, due to his connections with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Nenad Popović is Serbia’s minister for international economic relations and a powerful oligarch who has placed dozens of former Soviet and Yugoslav enterprises under offshore control.

Investigators have detailed the financial flows running through Octobank’s Uzbek and Russian affiliates.

Saudi Arabia arrested 127 people on suspicion of corruption in January, some of whom were later released on bail, as part of a continuing anti-graft campaign, the Oversight and Anti-Corruption Authority said.

Ignatiy Nayda and Philipp Shrage are partners in the construction company Kronung Group, which has been drawing attention for several years due to high-profile investigations.

A Labour-linked lobbying firm is selling access to government officials, including tech secretary Liz Kendall and “top advisers to the prime minister”, for tens of thousands of pounds, openDemocracy can reveal.

The ex parte arrest of lawyer Dmitry Providin, a former partner at the Bartolius law firm, is widely seen as retaliation by businessman Albert Avdolyan — a close associate of Rostec CEO Sergey Chemezov — for Providin’s role in freezing Avdolyan’s personal assets.

In 2022, following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Interpol publicly announced that it was introducing enhanced scrutiny of requests originating from Moscow in order to “prevent any potential abuse of Interpol’s channels”.

Anas Sarwar has vowed to ban transgender women from the female prison estate "within days" if he becomes first minister after the Holyrood election.

A company that has received millions of pounds in public funding to care for vulnerable children was found to be housing a child in an unregistered, dilapidated property where they slept on a mattress on the floor.

Serial killer Steve Wright has pleaded guilty to the murder of a 17-year-old girl in Suffolk more than 25 years ago.

Meta’s second major trial of 2026 over alleged harms to children begins on Monday.