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🇳🇱 Follow The Money: Our Dutch partner reveals that nearly 140 members of the European Parliament were caught misspending EU allowances allocated for their assistants. Thirty-one lawmakers have yet to return the money, and only a limited number of these cases have been passed on to prosecutors.
🇲🇰 IRLMacedonia: Our member center in North Macedonia is preparing to appeal and file a complaint against a troubling court decision made earlier this month, in which a judge advised authorities to shut down the newsroom.
The judge argued that as a civil society organization, IRL is not protected by the same press freedom laws given to broadcasters and print publications.
The ruling is part of a spurious defamation case made by a businessman implicated by IRLMacedonia’s reporting on the trade in highly polluting fuel oil.
🇷🇺 IStories: Our Russian member center reports on how a leader in the national political party “A Just Russia” allegedly adopted a Ukrainian child, who was taken from an orphanage in Kherson. Documents obtained by journalists indicate that Sergei Mironov and his wife secretly changed the name and citizenship of the 10-month-old during Russia’s occupation of the city.
🇸🇪 Goteborgs-Posten: Our Swedish partner in collaboration with OCCRP reports that the attorney general in Cyprus has been asked to reopen an investigation into a 2017 business deal with a leading politician that allowed an Iraqi national to obtain Cypriot citizenship.
The Iraqi national has since used his Cypriot passport to register for residency in Sweden and open companies in the UK, according to our reporting.
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🧑🏼💻 Big Crypto Restructure: The CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has resigned after pleading guilty to money laundering charges in the United States, which has accused the Cayman Islands-based company of facilitating sanction evasion for users in Iran, Syria, and Russian-occupied territories.
Going forward, Binance will need to report suspicious transactions to U.S. authorities after it pays roughly $4.3 billion in penalties and forfeitures.
🇨🇭 Switzerland: The country is considering establishing a register of companies’ “ultimate beneficial owners,” critical information in fighting money laundering. However, the proposed UBO register would not be available to journalists and other members of the public.
Switzerland agreed to implement a UBO database after pressure from the U.S. government, which is concerned about the role Swiss banks play in hiding Kremlin-linked money. But the U.S. has yet to implement a national UBO database itself.
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❓ Not familiar with UBOs? Read about why company ownership data is so important and why it should be publicly accessible.
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🌐 United Nations: The General Assembly voted to adopt a global framework on tax rules. The resolution, which was passed with an overwhelming majority, paves the way for the UN to have greater input in international tax negotiations. Currently, many cross-border tax matters are decided by the OECD, a group of mostly wealthy countries.
The Financial Times reported that diplomats from the United Kingdom and European Union were accused of launching a last-minute attempt to “kill” the UN resolution.
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Join the fight against corruption.
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💻 Investigating CABEI, ‘The Dictators’ Bank’: Our partners at CLIP will host a live webinar about our investigations into the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), the region’s main development bank.
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In this CLIP webinar, you can expect journalists to share their findings while experts from Transparency International will discuss how our reporting might spur reform at CABEI.
Register for Free
Thursday, November 30th
11:00 U.S. Eastern Time / 17:00 Central European Time
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🇦🇿 Azerbaijan: Two journalists were arrested in Azerbaijan after their outlet, Abzas Media, published investigations about the wealth of President Ilham Aliyev’s family.
OCCRP has previously worked with one of the arrested journalists, Sevinj Vaqifqizi, who was also the target of Pegasus spyware.
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🇦🇲 Armenia: The transportation and infrastructure ministry awarded a contract worth roughly US$2.5 million to Hakob Stepanyan, a businessman on trial for defrauding the same ministry of more than $600,000. This is the second time Stepanyan has been awarded a government contract despite the criminal allegations.
🇺🇦 Ukraine: Two lawmakers are being investigated by anti-corruption authorities for allegedly offering bribes to officials overseeing the country’s reconstruction effort. The probe comes days after two top cybersecurity officials were reportedly fired in connection with an investigation into an embezzlement scheme.
The country’s ongoing anti-corruption purge comes as Kyiv seeks to join the European Union and secure more military support from the West.
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🇺🇸 United States: A bill was introduced in Congress that would require all transport carriers to make their manifests – documents that list the cargo they carry – publicly available. Under current U.S. law, only ocean-faring ships must publicly disclose what they purport to have onboard. The proposed legislation would extend this requirement to planes, trucks, and trains.
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⚡ OCCRP Has Impact: The press release for the “Manifest Modernization Act” cited our 2019 investigation about cocaine concealed in shipments of bananas, which relied on public data from shipping manifests.
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P.S. Thank you for reading the OCCRP newsletter. Feel free to reply with any feedback.
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