Authorities in three European countries have frozen more than $130 million in assets linked to an investigation into money laundering in Lebanon, a European Union agency said Monday, the Associated Press reported. The measures taken by officials in France, Germany and Luxembourg come as Lebanon grapples with a devastating economic crisis and coincide with domestic and European investigations of its longtime central bank governor, Riad Salameh.

Irish retail sales rose in February as Covid-19 restrictions were lifted and consumers spent more in bars, and on hardware and electrical goods, the Irish Times reported. Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures show retail volumes were up 0.9 per cent month on month. The sectors with the largest monthly increases were bars (13.9 per cent); hardware, paints and glass (7 per cent); and electrical goods (4.8 per cent). Sales volumes, however, in department stores declined by 5.4 per cent.

Tennis great Boris Becker, who is on trial in London accused of failing to hand over his assets after he was declared bankrupt, has told a jury about his struggles with money including payments for an “expensive divorce” and debts when he lost large chunks of his income after retirement, the Associated Press reported. Becker said Monday that he wasn’t able to earn enough to pay his debts because of bad publicity when his reputation declined. He said that he had “expensive lifestyle commitments” including a house in Wimbledon that cost 22,000 pounds ($28,800) in rent each month.

Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, will host an online fund-raising event for Ukrainian refugees on April 9, the New York Times reported.

Some holders of a $3 billion Russia bond received an overdue interest payment, signaling that the heavily sanctioned nation will once again sidestep a default, Bloomberg News reported. The $66 million interest payment started showing up in accounts on Thursday, according to two international bondholders, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The payment was in dollars, one of the people said. A third bondholder reached Thursday said they had yet to see the payment.

German business morale plummeted in March as companies worried about rising energy prices, driver shortages and the stability of supply chains in the wake of the war in Ukraine, pointing to a possible future recession, a survey showed on Friday, Reuters reported. The Ifo institute said its business climate index dropped to 90.8 in March from a downwardly revised 98.5 in February. A Reuters poll of analysts had pointed to a March reading of 94.2.

Italian billionaire Gianluigi Aponte’s Mediterranean Shipping Co. will take a minority stake in Moby SpA as the ailing ferry company aims to settle a dispute with creditors and restructure its debt, Bloomberg News reported. MSC, one of the world’s largest container shipping companies, will provide fresh funds to Moby to pay off the administrators of Tirrenia, a unit it bought out of insolvency in 2011, according to a joint statement late Thursday. The firms didn’t disclose the size of the capital increase.

An Indian-origin soft drinks businessman from central England has been banned from holding a company directorship for nine years after admitting inflating figures to acquire a loan under a Covid-19 pandemic support scheme, the Hindustan Times reported. Inderjit Singh Dadial, whose ban comes into effect from this week, was the sole director of Cali Juices Limited, a wholesaler of specialised soft drinks incorporated in 2019 with a registered address in Wolverhampton.

The European Commission will look into the question of energy price caps after an extensive debate on the topic pushed by Spain at the EU summit, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday, Reuters reported. Germany and many other countries are sceptical about market interventions against high energy prices, he told a news conference at the end of the two day EU summit. Earlier, a European Union source said Germany and the Netherlands had opposed the southern countries in a "tough" debate on the issue of price caps.

After losing two years to the COVID-19 pandemic, shopkeepers in the heart of the Turkish Riviera had hoped for a strong tourism season this year to help keep their businesses afloat. But Russia’s war in Ukraine is fast dampening their spirits, the Associated Press reported. “We’re trying to earn our bread through tourism, but it looks like the war has finished off this (tourism) season, too,” Devrim Akcay said outside his clothing shop in the resort town of Belek, along the Mediterranean coast’s Antalya province.