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Greetings From Amsterdam,
Today is World Press Freedom Day, when we acknowledge the journalists who have been silenced, attacked, imprisoned, or even killed for their work. Many of today’s at-risk reporters are OCCRP colleagues and employees.
For this edition of OCCRP Weekly, we want to start by briefly sharing some of the threats our journalists are facing and how our network is trying to help them.
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🔴 Attacks on the OCCRP Network
For World Press Freedom Day
Arbitrary Detention: If we could only highlight one issue this WPFD, it would be the plight of our Kyrgyz colleagues at Temirov Live, three of whom remain behind bars after being arrested in January. The government began targeting the outlet in January 2022 after it exposed the secret wealth of a state security official. You can read more about these journalists’ situation here.
Independent Journalism Banned: Our member centers from Russia and Azerbaijan continue to report from exile. In 2022, the Russian government labeled OCCRP and our member center IStories “undesirable organizations,” prohibiting Russian citizens from associating with us in any way. In Azerbaijan, independent media has effectively been outlawed, making it dangerous for our reporters to return to the country.
Surveillance: In February, Pegasus spyware was detected on the phones of two of our Jordanian journalists. Our partners in Hungary and Azerbaijan were previously targeted with the military-grade spyware, which can infect devices without any action from the user.
Vexatious Lawsuits: Right now, the OCCRP network is grappling with over 70 defamation lawsuits. People who file “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs, may not even care if they win in court. Rather, their goal is to drain journalists of resources so they can’t continue with their work. SLAPPs are arguably the most widespread threat facing investigative journalists today. That’s why OCCRP helped launch Reporters Shield, a program that helps new outlets around the world avoid baseless lawsuits — and fight them if they happen anyway.
Intimidation & Harassment: Journalists at our member centers are frequently harassed by people they investigate. In the past month alone, the Slovenian prime minister has publicly targeted the editor in chief of our member center Oštro, referring to her during a press conference as “the censor that no one elected,” while men in Ukrainian military uniforms unexpectedly gave a draft notice to a journalist at our member center Slidstvo.Info after he reported on a security official.
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These are just some of the threats facing our network. If you want to help support these at-risk reporters, please consider making a donation to OCCRP.
Now, back to OCCRP Weekly. Here’s the latest in global crime and corruption:
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🇦🇿 Unfinished Business: OCCRP Finds Out Who’s Behind a Mysterious Shell Company with Big London Real Estate Assets.
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Turkish magnate Erdal Aksoy proudly describes himself as a fixer of major business deals between Turkey and Azerbaijan. His family is also behind a mystery shell company at the heart of a previous OCCRP investigation.
💡 Key Findings
- A new corporate filing reveals that the offshore company Vremax Properties Limited is owned by the family of Erdal Aksoy. A previous OCCRP investigation found that Vremax bought the luxury London residence of Juma Ahmadzada, the son of Azerbaijani official Ahmad Ahmadzada.
- Ahmad Ahmadzada, Erdal Aksoy, and Turkish construction magnate Mehmet Cengiz were all involved in a major dam-building project in Azerbaijan. Cengiz’s company paid $3 million to Vremax Properties after it won a tender to build the dam.
- A book and film on Erdal Aksoy's life reveal his links to Azerbaijan's political elite, including the President and the official who oversaw the dam's construction.
>> Read the full story
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More on our Data and Sources: In Azerbaijan, books are often published to commemorate the great deeds of politicians, or document the family histories of prominent figures. OCCRP investigative reporter Kelly Bloss discovered that one of these sycophantic books — about a state-backed dam — was unexpectedly revelatory, providing all sorts of new details about the project that allowed her to finish a long-running investigation.
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Support Investigative Journalism on World Press Freedom Day.
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🇸🇧 Solomon Islands: The Pacific island nation will have a new leader after Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare stepped down this week after his party failed to secure a majority in recent elections. In this analysis piece, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation explains Sogavare’s legacy and how OCCRP’s recent investigation into his real estate holdings may have played a role in his decision to resign.
🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan: The reporting of our local member center Kloop continues to make waves — though it’s not always credited for its contributions.
Last week, a state-run TV station shared Kloop’s 2019 investigation exposing how 43 hectares of an iconic city park had been illegally allocated to influential figures. But the government-backed outlet failed to mention Kloop’s name in its report, essentially passing off our findings as its own.
This isn’t the first time state-run media has plagiarized Kloop’s work. But this time it’s especially ironic, because it happened weeks after a court ordered the outlet’s closure as part of a wider crackdown on independent media.
🇱🇹 Lithuania: This week, OCCRP’s Lithuanian and Belarusian member centers, Siena and Buro Media, collaborated on an investigation into a company owned by the family of Ignas Vėgėlė, a frontrunner in Lithuania’s upcoming presidential elections. In their story, reporters revealed that the firm exported air conditioning units that may have been destined for Belarus, which is under EU sanctions.
The day after the story was published, the Lithuanian Customs Department said it was looking into the matter.
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🇲🇹 The Times of Malta: Our Maltese partner reports on an inquiry into disgraced former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s alleged role in shady deals to privatize state hospitals. This is far from the first corruption scandal that Muscat has found himself at the center of.
🇳🇱 Follow The Money: Our Dutch partner compiled a list of datasets that the European Commission has failed to give journalists for months — or sometimes years — even though Freedom of Information requests are supposed to be answered within 15 days.
🇳🇬 Premium Times: Our Nigerian member center reports on the government’s ongoing legal battle to reclaim $8.6 million that the United States seized in 2015 over accusations that the payment violated arms export laws.
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It Takes a Network to Fight a Network.
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🟡 The ‘Shape’ of Bitcoin Money Laundering: Researchers announced they’ve made a new artificial intelligence product that can detect potential criminal activity on blockchain platforms. The AI program looks for certain patterns in transactions that indicate money laundering.
🟡 A Binance Trial Concluded: The founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was sentenced this week to four months in a U.S. prison for allowing the platform to be used to move money for drug traffickers and terrorist groups.
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🇪🇸 Spain: Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced he would remain in office after suggesting that he could resign in light of a corruption probe into his wife, which his supporters say is politically motivated.
🇸🇰 Slovakia: The prosecutors who oversaw the murder cases of our colleague Ján Kuciak and his fiancé have resigned after the government dissolved their Special Prosecutor’s Office, which was responsible for politically sensitive cases. Slovakia’s ruling party, led by Robert Fico, has already dismantled several other anti-corruption initiatives, moves that the European Union has warned could cause “irreparable damage” to the rule of the law in the country.
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P.S. Thank you for reading the OCCRP newsletter. Feel free to reply with any feedback.
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