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Greetings from Amsterdam,
This week’s newsletter begins with some uplifting news.
A court in Prague ordered former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš to post apologies on Facebook — for seven consecutive days — to our colleague Pavla Holcová for defaming her.
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💁 The Backstory: In 2021, OCCRP, Pavla, and her colleagues at Investigace.cz published a bombshell Pandora Papers investigation uncovering Babiš’s secret offshore shell companies that invested in luxury French real estate.
After losing his subsequent re-election campaign, Babiš took to social media to blame –– and defame –– Pavla for his ouster. Specifically, he shared a Facebook post falsely implying that Pavla had admitted working with philanthropist George Soros to sink Babiš’s political career. Pavla never said this, and Soros has zero influence on her reporting. So, she sued Babiš.
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Like many journalists in the OCCRP network, Pavla has been the target of several baseless defamation lawsuits, known as SLAPPs, filed by the powerful people she investigates.
So when Babiš began to smear her on Facebook, and refused to take it down, she knew she could fight back with a legitimate argument of defamation.
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This verdict may also set legal precedent for defamatory speech made by European politicians. Stay tuned for more on this.
Now, the latest in global crime and corruption.
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🇺🇦 Kyiv Independent: Our Ukrainian member center reports on how pro-Russian sentiments in Kupiansk are making it harder for Ukrainian soldiers to defend the city, which is on the northeastern front. Experts on the ground say the majority of remaining residents of Kupiansk –– which was captured by Russia early in the war, but reclaimed by Ukraine last September –– tend to be older and sympathetic to Moscow.
🇭🇺 Direkt36: Our Hungarian member center is suing the national government for information about a proposed railway project that will allow Chinese companies to store potentially dangerous chemicals in Hungary, before transporting them throughout Europe.
The controversial proposal was uncovered in a Direkt36 investigation published in June that was based on leaked documents.
🇱🇻 re:Baltica: Our Latvian member center and Chayka.lv, another local outlet, have co-launched a mobile newsroom, where journalists will talk with readers about the issues affecting the city of Daugavpils.
🇷🇺 IStories: Our Russian member center reports on how the Kremlin’s crusade against foreign-funded organizations has resulted in the closure of German programs that support Russians who survived the war with Nazi Germany.
🇹🇲 Turkmen.News: Our Turkmen member center reports on state media’s terse response to an oil & gas deal between Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan that conspicuously left out Turkmenistan, which has the largest gas reserves in Central Asia.
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Change in Europe's Timber Industry: The Austrian timber processor HS Timber is changing how it calculates wood shipments after an OCCRP investigation.
In 2022, OCCRP and RISE Romania uncovered that HS Timber took in an estimated 1.6 million cubic meters of extra wood over a period of 13 years by requiring logs delivered to them to be longer than their reported measurements.
If the extra wood — known as “overlength” — was not delivered, HS Timber Group would downgrade the logs and refuse to pay full price for them. This requirement netted the industry giant an estimated $34 million of unofficial timber.
HS Timber now reports the entire length of the logs received from Romanian suppliers, according to our Austrian member center DOSSIER.
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Join the fight against corruption.
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🇺🇸 USA: Federal prosecutors handed down fresh charges against Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, accusing the billionaire of using $100 million in stolen customer funds to make donations to U.S. politicians.
🌍 Africa: The African Development Bank admitted that it has yet to allocate money from a $55 million anti-corruption fund that launched seven years ago. The FT reports that bank officials have essentially given up on the project, which came as a surprise to some Africa-based NGOs that had applied for funding.
🇧🇬 Bulgaria: Authorities are investigating suspected graft involving two EU-financed projects aimed at modernizing the country's railway system. The railway contracts were awarded to a consortium of companies with little experience in the industry, as revealed by our member center Bivol in 2018.
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🇵🇱 Poland: U.S. authorities charged a Polish national who was allegedly behind LolekHosted.net, a “bulletproof” web-hosting service provider that helped facilitate ransomware and other cybercrimes.
🇪🇺 Europe: Authorities from several European countries seized over two million euros from West African organized crime groups, including the Black Axe gang, operating across the continent. Nearly half of the seized money was recovered in Portugal.
🇨🇴 Colombia: Dairo Antonio Úsuga David, the alleged leader of the “Clan Del Golfo” (CGD) cartel, was handed two 45-year sentences for crimes related to his notorious paramilitary group.
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P.S. Thank you for reading the OCCRP newsletter. Feel free to reply with any feedback.
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