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Greetings From Amsterdam,
This edition of the OCCRP weekly newsletter begins with news about a “Russian” media law that has come back from the dead in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
For the second time in 13 months, the ruling Georgian Dream party is trying to pass the so-called “foreign agents” law, which mirrors legislation used by Moscow in 2021 to repress independent media throughout the country — including our member center.
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Not Familiar With the “Foreign Agents” Law? In short, the bill places unmanageable reporting requirements on NGOs and media outlets that work on politically related matters and receive at least 20 percent of their funding from abroad. If Georgia passes this law, it would be the second country to follow in Russia’s footsteps after Kyrgyzstan, which introduced its own version of a foreign agents bill this past March.
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The law would hamper some of Georgia’s top investigative reporting outlets — including those in the OCCRP network — in speaking with sources, connecting with readers, and promoting their work. Mass protests last year forced Georgia’s parliament to drop its first attempt at this bill. A similar show of opposition may be needed to defeat it a second time around.
Now, for the latest in global crime and corruption:
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Rape, Electric Shocks, and Threats of Castration: What Four Ukrainian Men Endured Under Russian Occupation
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Our Ukrainian member center Slidstvo.info spoke with four Ukrainian men who fell into Russian hands in the occupied Kherson region. In recorded conversations with journalists, they described being subject to savage acts of sexual violence, including electric shocks to the genitals and penetration with foreign objects.
⚠️ Indicative of a Larger Problem: According to Ukrainian prosecutors, 101 cases of sexual violence against Ukrainian men by Russian forces have been recorded, including 50 in the Kherson region. Experts say such cases are under-reported because men are often reluctant to come forward about sexual violence. >>Read the full story
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🇮🇱 Israel Passes Anti-Press Freedom Bill: The Israeli Parliament approved a bill allowing the government to ban foreign media outlets deemed a threat to national security. The bans would last for at least 45 days, and could be extended afterwards.
The law appears to be designed to limit reporting from Al Jazeera, the only global outlet with reporters in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared this intention in a post on X: “The terrorist channel Al Jazeera will no longer broadcast from Israel. I intend to act immediately under the new law to stop the channel from operating.”
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Did you know you can strengthen democracy, freedom of expression, access to quality information, and the rule of law in a single donation?
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🇰🇪 Africa Uncensored: A Kenyan Senate committee summoned our member center to share its recent story about the production and distribution of fake fertilizer as part of an official probe into the practice, which poses a serious issue for farmers who are demanding greater action from the government.
🇳🇬 Premium Times: Our Nigerian member center reports on a team of soldiers accused earlier this year of arbitrarily arresting and killing residents in Kaduna State, an area in the northwest of the country that has experienced several terrorist attacks in recent years, including hundreds of kidnappings. Premium Times spoke with relatives of victims, eyewitnesses, and other sources who attested that innocent civilians were killed by men in Nigerian military uniforms. The Nigerian Army denies involvement in the murders.
🇳🇱 Follow The Money: Our Dutch partner reports on how Toloka, a tech company registered in the Netherlands, has helped Russian surveillance companies train their facial recognition systems, which have been used to identify dissidents.
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🇷🇸 Serbia: The Serbian government has finally taken action against an alleged narco boss exposed by the OCCRP network in 2012. A court in Belgrade has ordered the seizure of assets that our Serbian colleagues revealed over 11 years ago were connected to Rodoljub Radulovic — aka Misha Banana.
🇸🇾 Syria: The United States sanctioned 11 people and entities accused of helping the Syrian government export captagon, a potent psychostimulant similar to amphetamines, throughout the Middle East and Asia. The list includes Syrian national Taher al-Kayali, who was mentioned in OCCRP’s 2021 investigation into the captagon trade.
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🇧🇷 Brazil: A Turkish drug trafficker with alleged ties to Hezbollah has been found living under a false identity in a Brazilian prison after escaping incarceration in neighboring Paraguay more than six years ago, police told OCCRP.
🇮🇳 India: In 2014, there were 25 Indian politicians under investigation for corruption who switched allegiance to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Ten years later, the cases against 23 of these politicians have either failed to proceed or have been dropped altogether, according to a report from The Indian Express. Narendra Modi’s party has long been accused of helping allies facing corruption allegations.
🇿🇦 South Africa: The speaker of South Africa’s parliament Mapisa-Nqakula has resigned over allegations that she solicited bribes during her time as defense minister. Mapisa-Nqakula belongs to the ruling African National Congress party, which faces its lowest poll numbers since taking power in 1994.
🇲🇲 Myanmar: The country also known as Burma has become Asia’s largest producer of illegal synthetic drugs, including pills with methamphetamine, often known as “yaba,” which loosely translates to “crazy drug” in Thai. Nikkei explains how Myanmar’s boom in meth production has fueled the country’s civil war and altered Burmese society.
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April 6 — Brazil Editor Eduardo Goulart will be on a panel at the Society for Environmental Journalists conference in Philadelphia titled, “Nearby and Far Away: What Local Reporting and Global Investigative Collaborations Can Learn From One Another.” You can livestream the conference here.
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P.S. Thank you for reading the OCCRP newsletter. Feel free to reply with any feedback.
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