Crime Archive

On Thursday, more than two dozen ministers from the government of former President Blaise Compaore appeared in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, for the opening of a trial over the events that precipitated their ouster two and a half years ago. Though Compaore’s legal team successfully obtained a one-week postponement, Burkinabe got to see their once-untouchable leadership answering to a court that could potentially hold them accountable for at least some of the crimes committed by the old regime. The case is no doubt symbolically important for a country that endured nearly three decades of Compaore’s inefficient and corrupt rule, followed […]

In early February, Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency discovered a cache of $9.8 million stashed in the house of Andrew Yakubu, the former managing director of Nigeria’s state-run oil firm, NNPC. Nigerians on Twitter and Facebook quickly expressed their amazement at the magnitude of the amount and speculated over how Yakubu had gotten the money. Before the cash discovery, Nigerians had been preoccupied with the news of President Muhammadu Buhari’s extended medical vacation, which lasted through March. But their attention was swiftly diverted by the news of Yakubu’s cash stockpile, which was hidden in a fireproof safe inside his home in northern […]

Last month, Bolivia passed new coca and drug control laws that marked another milestone in the independent—but to his critics, controversial—drug policy fashioned by President Evo Morales’ government. A decade in the making, the laws “were an essential step because the former drug law was imposed by the U.S.,” the vice minister for social movement coordination, Alfredo Rada, told the local press. He was referring to a 1988 law pushed by the United States that limited the production of coca—the main ingredient in cocaine—and carried harsh penalties for illegal cultivation. The new coca law nearly doubles the area for legal […]