Also, OCCRP goes to Oxford!

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Greetings from Amsterdam,

Another week, another blow to press freedom in Kyrgyzstan, supposedly Central Asia’s most democratic country. And this one hits close to home.

Last week, a court ordered our award-winning local member center Kloop ([link removed]) to shut down, ruling that it was practicing journalism without a license. Prosecutors also presented testimony from psychiatrists who accused the media outlet of “affecting people’s mental health” by “upsetting” them with negative information.

New to Kyrgyzstan’s Press Freedom Crisis? Kyrgyzstan’s once blossoming culture of investigative journalism — which included award-winning contributions ([link removed]) from the OCCRP network — has withered under President Sadyr Japarov, who came to power in 2020. Since then, the Kyrgyz government has taken step after step to criminalize dissent.

OCCRP is helping Kloop fight this absurd ruling, the latest case to fall before a judiciary that has repeatedly ruled against journalists in recent months.

Here’s more news in the fight against corruption:


**
UK LAW ASSISTS JOURNALISTS
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Kleptocrats love to stash their wealth in the United Kingdom, especially in London real estate. So it should be no surprise that U.K. properties are often owned by companies based in jurisdictions where corporate ownership can be kept secret.

But the fight against corruption got a huge assist in 2022, when the U.K. began requiring offshore firms to declare their “beneficial owners.” The law, while far from perfect, has helped OCCRP uncover major assets belonging to politically connected elites in other countries.

This week on our blog, “OCCRP: Unreported,” we go behind the scenes of these investigations to explain how we got the most out of these datasets on beneficial ownership. >> Read the full article ([link removed])


** 🇬🇧 WANT MORE REPORTING FROM THE UK?
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Have you heard of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ)? It’s the U.K.’s largest not-for-profit independent newsroom and a media partner of OCCRP.

Their investigations are wide-ranging – tracking everything from corrupt cash flowing into the U.K. to the influence operations threatening democratic elections across the world.

But their core mission is twofold: to expose injustice and spark change from their reporting.

You can keep up with their award-winning stories by signing up to Uncovered, TBIJ's weekly newsletter.

Every Saturday, Editor Franz Wild will give you the inside scoop on some of TBIJ’s biggest investigations — and how their reporters got the information.

Sign Up For Their Newsletter
JOIN TBIJ ([link removed])


** THE OCCRP NETWORK
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🇷🇺 IStories: Our Russian member center reveals that the family of Andrei Akimov ([link removed]) , the longtime head of state-owned Gazprombank, quietly sold some of their properties throughout the European Union and the Caribbean after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

🇦🇿 Mikroskop Media: Our Azeri member center says that Facebook and Instagram have blocked users in Azerbaijan from viewing several of their posts ([link removed]) about irregularities in the country’s recent elections.

🇲🇹 Times of Malta: Our Maltese partner uncovers a new wrinkle in the corruption scandal ([link removed]) that led to the fall of former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s government in 2019. Authorities found that a close associate of Konrad Mizzi, the disgraced former minister at the heart of the scandal, secretly received millions of euros in payments during his tenure in government, which included dealings with Muscat himself.
Join the fight against corruption.
SUPPORT OCCRP ([link removed])


** CORRUPTION NEWS
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🇸🇰 Slovakia: Despite warnings from the European Union that it was risking “irreparable damage ([link removed]) ” ([link removed]) to rule of law, Slovakia’s government fast-tracked a set of reforms that scrapped several anti-corruption measures.

One of the more controversial aspects of the new legislation is a provision shutting a special prosecutor’s office that dealt with high-level corruption.

A Fling with Transparency: The 2018 murder of our colleague Jan Kuciak changed Slovakia forever — or at least that’s how it seemed at the time.

Public outrage over the killing of a journalist, and the deep-seated corruption that allowed the accused killers to operate with impunity, led to the ouster of Prime Minister Robert Fico less than a month later. Two years later, a small party decisively beat Fico’s Smer in national elections ([link removed]) on pledges of clean governance.

But Fico’s break from power only lasted three years. He regained control of parliament at the end of 2023 as part of a coalition government.

🇺🇳 United Nations: The UN Convention Against Corruption passed a resolution ([link removed]) that calls on states to strengthen confidential complaint systems and reporting mechanisms for those who blow the whistle on corruption. While the resolution is non-binding, it offers some of the first internationally recognized standards when it comes to protecting whistleblowers from retaliation.

🇱🇷 Liberia: Within his first month in office, President Joseph Boakai has ordered audits ([link removed]) into the three government institutions, including the central bank, after claiming the previous administration had overstated the balance ([link removed]) of state coffers by roughly $20 million.

🇷🇺 Alexei Navalny Dies in Prison: Russia’s most prominent dissident died ([link removed]) in a penal colony ([link removed]) near the Arctic Circle known for its harsh conditions. Before Navalny was detained on charges widely considered to be politically motivated, he and his organization built a large following through detailed video investigations that exposed corruption at the highest levels of the Russian government.


** CALLOUT! HELP OCCRP IMPROVE
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OCCRP needs your input! We're updating our website and we want to hear from our readers.

If you’d be willing to have a 45-minute chat with one of our team members, please reach out by responding to this email. As a thank you, participants will receive six months of free membership to our Accomplice program, which grants insider access to groundbreaking journalism and behind-the-scenes content.


** OCCRP GOES TO UNI
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Politicians can’t hide the proceeds from corruption on their own. They do so with the help of lawyers, accountants, and other professionals.

OCCRP and partners have published hundreds of investigations about these enablers of corruption. But there is still much to learn about how they operate and adapt to new financial technologies, so OCCRP is teaming up with the University of Exeter and the University of Oxford.

A team of political scientists, data specialists, and journalists will work together to compile information on professional actors who provide services to high-risk clients. Academic researchers will then analyze this information to identify enabler networks and trends in enabler behavior. The collaboration represents the first-ever large-scale effort to marshal OCCRP’s data capacities for academic research. >> Read announcement ([link removed])
P.S. Thank you for reading the OCCRP newsletter. Feel free to reply with any feedback.

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