Ireland has the ninth highest number of financial transactions linked to money laundering or terrorist financing in the European Union, according to a new report.

Having retired from the force after 39 years, Michael O’Sullivan has seen gangs come and go, and has no doubt what faces the Kinahan cartel. He talks to Cormac O’Keeffe

Ten top-level Irish gangs dominate the trafficking of drugs from Spain and the Netherlands into Ireland.

Fifty-two inmates have been killed and 12 injured in a brutal fight between two rival factions at a prison in northern Mexico.

Oil giant BP faces being drawn into the foreign exchange (forex) rigging scandal after it emerged that it has been investigating whether its traders were linked to the manipulation of the £3 trillion-a-day market.

Senior Mexican drug cartel leader Heriberto Lazcano has apparently been killed in a fight with marines in the northern border state of Coahuila, the navy said.

US agents helped make Joaquin Guzman the most powerful drug lord in the world. Aram Roston reports

Mexican marines have captured a founding member of the brutal Zetas drug cartel, the navy announced.

More than two decades after the US forced him from power, Manuel Noriega returned to Panama as a prisoner and, to many of those he once ruled with impunity, an irrelevant man.

FORMER military strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega was flown home to Panama yesterday to be punished once again for crimes he committed during a career that saw him transformed from a Cold War ally of Washington to the target of a US invasion.

Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega will be extradited to his homeland in the next few weeks, the French Justice Ministry said.

MEXICAN human rights activists want the International Criminal Court to investigate President Felipe Calderon, top officials and the country’s most wanted drug trafficker, accusing them of allowing subordinates to kill, torture and kidnap civilians.

POLICE found a woman’s decapitated body in a Mexican border city on Saturday, alongside a handwritten sign saying she was killed in retaliation for her postings on a social networking site.

A STATE police officer has been arrested in connection with last week’s arson fire at a casino that killed 52 people in northern Mexico.

Oil prices have surged after cartel Opec failed to back an increase in supplies which could have given some respite to UK motorists squeezed by high forecourt costs.

An anti-violence march that began in a central Mexico state with a few hundred people and gathered thousands over a four-day trek has reached Mexico’s capital.

A letter purportedly signed by La Familia drug cartel announcing a one-month truce circulated in Mexico’s western state of Michoacan.

Hooded gunmen killed the mayor of a small town in the northern Mexico state of San Luis Potosi, and prosecutors announced the arrest of seven suspects in the massacre of 72 migrants in August.

Police have captured a drug kingpin blamed for a vicious turf war that has included bodies hung from bridges and shootouts in central Mexico.

A drugs-war gun battle erupted on the main coast boulevard in the heart of Mexico’s tourist mecca Acapulco, killing six people, including an eight-year-old girl and her mother.

JUST a few weeks ago, the two officers were lauded as part of a new breed of honest cop, elevated to become key players in a drive to overhaul one of Mexico’s most notorious police forces.

Police have smashed a major drugs ring in Mexico City seizing weapons, vehicles - and lions.

Six kidnapping victims were today found dead inside a house where gunmen took refuge during a chaotic three-hour gun battle with soldiers and police in Mexico.

TWO leading members of the Colombian gang which helped make cocaine an affordable drug in Ireland are set to face trial later this year.

The man who directed hit teams against the Colombian cocaine cartel’s Pablo Escobar fingered a disgraced politician yesterday as being behind the 1989 assassination of leading presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan.

Gunmen on motorcycles have killed the new chief of secret police as he drove his car in Medellin, Colombia.

A leading American expert on organised crime has been recruited to help tackle the problem in Northern Ireland.