NEW INVESTIGATIONS

Two Chinese scam artists had an interesting proposal for the Marshall Islands, a tiny country with a population under 50,000:

They would turn an atoll in the middle of Pacific Ocean — with dangerous levels of radiation from years of U.S. atomic bomb testing — into a modern metropolis.

The duo ended up in a U.S. jail instead. How they got there is an untold tale of international bribery and grifting that stretched to the very center of the United Nations.

>> Read the full story

Documents leaked from Cyprus show that Kremlin-linked oligarch Roman Abramovich gave a massive art collection to his ex-wife just before he was hit by sanctions when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Experts say it’s one of the most impressive private art collections in the world. Made up of over 300 pieces — including works by Picasso, Monet, and Degas — it was valued in 2018 at nearly $1 billion.

🌐 The Big Picture: In February 2022, OCCRP, the Guardian, and other partners revealed how the Cypriot trust that held the art collection was restructured, obscuring Abramovich’s ownership.

But the scale of the private collection, newly revealed in these leaked files, far surpasses what was previously known. 

🤔 Our Data and Sources: This investigation is based on leaked corporate documents from Cyprus, obtained by the data transparency activist collective Distributed Denial of Secrets.

>> Read the full story

In 2017, Georgia adopted a law requiring politicians and public officials to declare assets over 5,000 GEL (approx. $1,900). But the OCCRP network has identified yet another prominent member of the government who has failed to comply with this anti-corruption mandate.

The head of the state-owned Georgian Railway, ​​David Peradze, has a lush villa in the country’s capital of Tbilisi that he failed to declare. Reporters also found that Peradze’s wife has not declared a number of luxury fashion products.

🌐 The Big Picture: This isn’t the first time OCCRP has found a Georgian official with undeclared assets. In fact, over half of the 346 officials whose declarations were checked by officials last year had omissions and inaccuracies, according to a report by Transparency International. The one-time fine for violating the declaration law appears to be of little deterrence. 

>> Read the full story

THE OCCRP NETWORK

🇳🇱 Follow The Money: Our Dutch partner published an interactive database of some of the most influential NGOs in Europe, and the civil society projects they fund. The database combines records from the EU transparency register, annual reports, and tax forms.

🇷🇺 IStories: Journalists from our Russian member center have received several serious and credible death threats. In the emails, the anonymous sender indicated they knew the journalists’ home addresses and travel itineraries. 

🇺🇦 Kyiv Independent: Our Ukrainian member center has a weekly video podcast explaining big issues affecting the country. This week, reporters discuss the recent Ukrainian attacks on Crimea. 

🇨🇿 Investigate.cz: Our Czech member center reports on the deteriorating security situation for Russian and Belarusian journalists reporting from exile in Europe. 

🇳🇬 Premium Times: Our Nigerian member center reports on an allegedly secret meeting between seven leaders of terrorist organizations and two individuals believed to be representatives of the government.

The terrorist groups suspected of attending the summit are responsible for the abduction and killings of thousands of residents in Nigeria’s northwest region.

💸 FOLLOW THE MONEY NEWS

🇷🇺 Russia: Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced it will exit the Russian market, citing potential regulatory challenges in the United States. The company will sell its Russian operations to the recently-formed exchange CommEx. 

CORRUPTION NEWS

🇨🇾 Cyprus: The Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption, a key EU anti-graft body also known as GRECO, publicly criticized Cyprus for failing to systematically address corruption within its government. 

🇺🇸 United States: The U.S.-based chemical manufacturer Albemarle Corporation has agreed to pay over $218 million to settle allegations that it bribed officials in Indonesia, India, and Vietnam. The Department of Justice said the company received nearly $100 million from the bribery schemes. 

🇮🇳 India: Amnesty International says Indian authorities are exploiting anti-money laundering recommendations made by the Financial Action Task Force, a G7 anti-money laundering initiative, to silence critical voices at civil society organizations. 

🇱🇾 Libya: The New York Times cites two OCCRP investigations in a story about how corruption contributed to the deterioration of the dams that collapsed last month, killing at least 4,000 people. 

GLOBAL CRIME NEWS

🇧🇷 Brazil: Notorious drug kingpin Antônio Joaquim Mendes Gonçalves da Mota recently evaded arrest for the second time after apparently receiving a tip about the police operation, according to documents seen by OCCRP. 

🇬🇧 United Kingdom: The British Museum has launched a crowdsourcing campaign in hopes of recovering historic artifacts that have gone missing from its collection.

🇮🇹 Italy: Italian authorities arrested several people accused of stealing EU funds dedicated to agricultural development by falsely claiming ownership of non-existent pastures.

PODCAST EPISODE 2

Investigating the Beirut Blast: How do you begin to investigate the explosion that tore through the Lebanese capital city of Beirut, killing more than 200 people?

In this episode Nick Wallis takes us back to August 2020, talking to OCCRP reporters Rana Sabbagh and Aubrey Belford about how they picked apart the opaque web of secrecy behind the cause of the explosion, scouring the globe from Russia to Mozambique to track down the true owner of the deadly cargo that triggered the devastating blast in Lebanon’s capital.