The trial of Diezani Alison-Madueke resumed this week in the Southwark Crown Court in London, with prosecutors alleging that the former Nigerian oil minister once blew about $190,000 (140,000 GBP) on a shopping spree for furniture and art that was paid by intermediaries.

The trial, which began in January, is the latest milestone in a longstanding corruption investigation across multiple jurisdictions.

Alison-Madueke, 65, who is currently out on bail, was minister from 2010 to 2015 under President Goodluck Jonathan and chaired the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, for part of that time. She was first questioned by British authorities in 2015, and formally charged in 2023 on several counts of bribery.

Britain’s National Crime Agency accused her of improperly influencing multimillion dollar oil contracts in return for bribes, including at least $137,000 (100,000 GBP) in cash. Prosecutors allege she “enjoyed a life of luxury in London” that included the use of several London properties and service staff, furniture, school fees for her children, private flights and chauffeur-driven cars.

repatriation of over $52 million in forfeited funds that were proceeds of corruption.

Assets seized by the U.S. included prime real estate in New York and California, and the superyacht Galactica Star.

st week, the U.K. court heard how the bank cards of Aluko and his company Tenka Limited paid about $2.5 million (more than 2 million GBP) for Alison-Madueke’s shopping sprees at London’s famous departmental store, Harrods. Tenka also allegedly paid for staff and refurbishments at the property that Alison-Madueke used.

Aluko rose to prominence during Alison-Madueke’s stint as minister, when Nigeria’s government awarded lucrative oil blocks to companies linked to him on a no-bid basis. One of those companies was created the day before it was granted a multimillion dollar licensing deal.

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first appeared in court in 2015, Mossack Fonseca helped Aluko obtain a $30 million home loan.

In July 2016, Nigerian authorities charged Aluko alongside several others with ties to the former minister, but his name was later dropped from the charge sheet. State prosecutors admitted that they had been unable to locate him and serve him with court papers.

In 2022, a Nigerian appeals court upheld the decision to seize Nigerian properties belonging to Aluko, including a mansion valued at $19 million.

In Alison-Madueke’s trial, which is expected to last for about three months, her lawyer maintains that she was merely a “rubber stamp” for official decisions that she had no real influence over.

According to media reports, her lawyer told the court that payments were made on her behalf “because Nigerian ministers are forbidden from having bank accounts abroad”, and that the payments were reimbursed.

After years of alarms raised by experts and civil society groups about transnational repression, the Canadian government has named its first foreign interference watchdog, ICIJ’s media partner CBC News reports.

Former British Columbia chief electoral officer Anton Boegman, nominated by the federal government, will take on the new position, CBC News reports. The seven days given to opposition parties to respond lapsed this week.

The new watchdog comes less than a year since ICIJ’s China Targets investigation revealed how Chinese authorities use extensive surveillance, pressure on family members, hacking and other tactics to target regime critics living overseas.

The collaboration of over 40 media partners worldwide featured interviews with 105 targets, alongside internal Chinese government records spanning two decades, to reveal a coordinated, systematic and global effort by the Chinese government to neutralize dissent in all forms.

In Canada, CBC News uncovered cases of intimidation and harassment against a Hong Kong pro-democracy advocate in exile and a pro-Taiwan activist that included the circulation of deepfake, sexually explicit images online and threats against the activist’s family members still living in China.

Lawmakers have repeatedly emphasized the issue as a priority; in the time since, CBC News reports, the results of a foreign interference inquiry concluded transnational repression was a “genuine scourge” in Canada, citing China as the “most active perpetrator of foreign interference targeting Canadian democratic institutions.”

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Reporting by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists helped force a shift in Beijing’s public stance on Xinjiang, according to new academic research — from denying the existence of a vast detention camp system to justifying it and, eventually, to partially dismantling it.

In an article published in Modern China, a peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to China studies, political scientist Jan Švec traces how China responded to growing global scrutiny of its “re-education” campaign in Xinjiang between 2014 and 2022. Švec, who’s based at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, used official Chinese documents, state media analysis, leaked files, and international reporting to argue that international exposure played a decisive role in forcing Beijing to adjust both its narrative and its policies.

Following ethnic rioting, and a series of deadly terror attacks within and outside Xinjiang which Beijing blamed on Uyghurs, President Xi Jinping launched a “Strike Hard Campaign against Violent Extremism” in 2014 that framed Uyghur identity as a security threat. Local authorities experimented with so-called “de-extremization” centers, openly praising them in regional media. At this stage, there was little international awareness — and little effort to conceal what was happening.

That changed dramatically in 2017, when mass detentions expanded across the region. As arrests surged, Beijing imposed a strict information blackout. References to the camps disappeared from national media, and Xinjiang coverage was softened to emphasize development and stability. But outside China, journalists, researchers and Uyghur exile groups began piecing together evidence of mass incarceration.

Švec says a turning point came in late 2019 after the U.S. imposed sanctions over the repression of Uyghurs and ICIJ published the China Cables, a trove of leaked internal documents that laid bare how the camps operated. The files included detailed instructions on surveillance, discipline and indefinite detention, confirming in the Chinese government’s own words what survivors and investigators had long alleged: the camps were coercive, centrally coordinated and part of a sweeping program of mass surveillance and population control.

China, which denies human rights abuses and says religious freedom is respected in Xinjiang, responded to the China Cables investigation by decrying it as “pure fabrication and fake news.”

China Cables and a second leak published that November by the New York Times called the Xinjiang Papers — which included internal speeches and documents confirming the central authorities endorsed the mass repression —  had immediate impact. Google searches for “Xinjiang” surged by 236 percent between September and December of 2019, according to Švec.

“The leaked documents and the imposition of sanctions significantly heightened the public attention on Xinjiang in late 2019,” he wrote.

According to Švec, Chinese officials reacted to the leaks as forcefully as they did to Western sanctions. State media launched aggressive attacks on critical media reports, while diplomats scrambled to counter the damage.

“In one response, the official media deemed it necessary to say that Western media ‘cannot have any actual influence’ and ‘just cannot do anything about it’. An officially published letter by a former ‘student’ of one of the camps urged Americans to ‘shut up,’ ” Švec writes.

Yet just days after the China Cables were published, authorities announced that all camp “trainees” had “graduated,” signaling an abrupt policy shift.

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al, partial acknowledgment, formal legalization, downsizing and eventual abandonment of the camps as a visible policy. He says detention facilities were physically dismantled or repurposed, and references to the camps vanished from official discourse after 2020.

Crucially, he says, these changes began before major sanctions were imposed, suggesting that exposure and “naming and shaming” were more influential than economic penalties alone. “China explicitly reacted to investigative findings,” Švec wrote, adjusting its approach even as it publicly insisted it had done nothing wrong.

Švec adds, “Nevertheless, although the first sanctions were adopted only in October 2019, the threat of their imposition had existed since at least 2018, and their influence on the decision making of the authorities cannot be excluded as well.” He states that China’s decision to retreat from the policy of mass internment in Xinjiang was most likely shaped by a combination of international pressure and the perceived reduction of security threats.

Švec argues that his findings challenge the widespread belief that China is immune to international criticism on sensitive domestic issues like Xinjiang. Instead, it suggests that Beijing is deeply concerned about its global image — particularly when human rights abuses threaten diplomatic ties, economic ambitions, and flagship projects like the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s massive global infrastructure and investment strategy.