NEW INVESTIGATIONS

When Armen Sarkissian was the president of Armenia, his wife and sons were registered to live in a five-story mansion in Chelsea, one of London’s poshest neighborhoods. The property’s owner, however, was unknown, listed only as an opaque offshore company registered in the black box of corporate activity known as the British Virgin Islands. 

But this week, OCCRP and our member center Hetq revealed the person behind the firm, and therefore the landlord of Armenia’s then first family: the ex-president’s sister Karine Sargsyan.

💁 Wait there’s more! The ex-president’s sister is the owner of at least four other British Virgin Islands firms which each own other high-end London properties worth tens of millions of pounds.

🧍Will the Real Owner Please Stand Up? The impressive real estate portfolio raises questions about the true owner of the properties. Unlike his sister, who spent years working as a doctor at Armenian state hospitals, Sarkissian is a successful businessman who would have little trouble affording luxury properties. When reached for comment, the ex-president said he entrusted the companies to his sister as a part of a wealth transfer in the 1990s when he first entered public service.  

🇦🇲 Why This Matters For Armenia: If Armen Sarkissian has been the true owner of the London properties, he was required by law to declare them to the Armenian government when he returned to politics in 2013. But the properties don’t show up in Sarkissian’s asset declarations from 2013 to 2022. 

🌎 Why This Matters For the World: This is not the only story made possible thanks to laws requiring the disclosure of “ultimate beneficial owners.” This information previously allowed us to reveal the London property of the son of a powerful Azeri official. Similarly, in Luxembourg, we used beneficial ownership data to reveal that an Indonesian palm oil tycoon was the secret owner of the iconic Ludwig complex in Munich. 

>> Read the full story

FOLLOW THE MONEY NEWS

🇺🇸 FinCen Delays Award Program: Three U.S. senators have demanded that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network explain by February 23 why it hasn’t fully implemented the whistleblower award program that was passed into law in 2021. The initiative would give financial compensation to people who provide authorities with original information about major cases of money laundering or sanctions evasion.


🇹🇭 Thailand Courts Crypto Money: The Finance Ministry announced it was exempting digital asset trading from the country’s seven percent value added tax (VAT), in a bid to attract more cryptocurrency firms to the Southeast Asian country. 

CORRUPTION NEWS

🇯🇴 Pegasus in Jordan: At least 35 journalists, human rights lawyers, and political activists have had their mobile phones infected with Pegasus, the military-grade spyware developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, according to a new report from the digital rights organization Access Now. The targets include two OCCRP journalists and employees of Human Rights Watch.

🇺🇳 UN Acts on Guardian Investigation: The United Nations Development Program will send a team to Iraq to investigate allegations of corruption in its $1.5 billion reconstruction program after a Guardian investigation last month revealed accusations that staff had been soliciting bribes.

ORGANIZED CRIME NEWS

⛽ Calls To Regulate ‘Gas Station Heroin’: U.S. customs officials seized a Texas-bound shipment from Hong Kong of roughly five kilograms of tianeptine, a compound often referred to as "gas station heroin” that is currently unregulated by the federal government. Several members of Congress have previously demanded that the Food and Drug Administration outlaw unprescribed sales of the drug, which is often marketed as a dietary supplement in gas stations, hence the name. 

🇮🇹 Mafia Rapunzel Re-Nabbed: Italian mafia boss Marco Raduano was recaptured by French authorities after escaping from a Sardinian prison last year by scaling down the building’s walls using knotted bed sheets. 

OCCRP EVENT

Scottish Anti-SLAPP Summit: Index on Censorship is hosting a conference in Glasgow that will bring together lawyers, journalists, experts and campaigners to learn more about "strategic lawsuits against public participation," or SLAPPs, in Scotland. OCCRP Co-Founder Paul Radu will be a headline speaker at the event to talk about his personal experience with SLAPPs as well as the numerous frivolous lawsuits filed against our organization.