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Greetings From Amsterdam,
This week, OCCRP uncovered another politically-exposed person's unexplained wealth with the help of a U.K. transparency law that has been a blessing for investigative journalists worldwide.
Also in this newsletter, we offer updates into the legal woes of our colleagues in Serbia and Kyrgyzstan.
Here’s the latest edition of OCCRP Weekly:
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UNEXPLAINED WEALTH IN LONDON
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Former Georgian Defense Official Paid Cash For a Secret London Flat
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In Georgia, government officials are required to submit asset declarations every year, including a final declaration when they leave office. In our latest story, we reveal that Mamuka Mujiri, a deputy defense minister involved in procuring arms, failed to list a significant asset when leaving his post in 2008.
💡 The Revelation: On his final asset declaration, Mujiri did not list his firm in the Seychelles, nor the London flat he purchased using the same offshore company.
His declarations also show that neither he nor his family possessed sufficient income or assets to buy the apartment which — according to its U.K. land registry document — was purchased outright, using no mortgage or bank loan.
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🫡 Georgia’s Honor System: In 2017, Georgia adopted a mechanism that allowed anti-corruption authorities to verify the information public officials put on their asset declarations form.
But this monitoring mechanism has apparently had limited success in combating corruption. For one, the Civil Service Bureau does not have the resources to check what a person owns abroad.
“Here we depend only on the person’s good faith,” Alexander Kevkhishvili, project manager at Transparency International Georgia, told OCCRP in July 2023.
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🇬🇧 The U.K. Law That Journalists Love: This investigation was possible thanks to a law the United Kingdom implemented in 2022 that forces offshore companies — even ones registered in opaque tax havens — to disclose their “ultimate beneficial owners” (UBO) if they own property in England or Wales. Since the rule came into effect, OCCRP has been able to expose several politically-exposed persons who’ve secretly owned luxury London real estate for years.
Mujiri, however, no longer owns this U.K. property. A few weeks after complying with the UBO disclosure law, he sold the London flat for £615,000, according to land registry documents.
>> Read the full story
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🇷🇸 KRIK: Press freedom groups have condemned the latest — and arguably most consequential — lawsuit filed against our Serbian member center.
Last week, a Belgrade judge and her husband filed a civil lawsuit and a criminal complaint against KRIK journalists. The journalists had published the couple's names, positions, and properties in "Judge Who Judges," a database of Serbia’s judiciary members.
🇰🇬 Temirov Live: Hearings will begin tomorrow in the trial of 11 Kyrgyz reporters from OCCRP’s media partner. They’re charged with “inciting mass unrest,” which critics say is part of a crackdown on free expression in the Central Asian country. A lawyer for Temirov Live’s director said the hearings will be closed to the public, and media.
✍️ Our Reporting From Gaza: Palestinian journalist Mohammed Abushahma, who collaborated with OCCRP on two stories about corruption in Gaza, was acknowledged by the Samir Kassir Award, one of the most prestigious journalism prizes in the Middle East and North Africa region.
Abushahma and OCCRP revealed how war profiteers and middlemen pushed up prices of food and other vital commodities in Gaza, aggravating the misery of people stuck in the besieged strip.
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OCCRP Needs Your Help. Can You Make a Donation Today?
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Dubai Revelations Prompt Questions From EU Parliamentarians
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After the publication of our Dubai Unlocked project, several European parliamentarians have questioned whether the United Arab Emirates should have been taken off the “gray list” of countries at risk of money laundering and terrorist financing.
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What is the ‘Gray List’? Global financial institutions are more likely to scrutinize money flows involving countries on the “jurisdictions under increased monitoring.” The so-called “gray list” designation is maintained by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an anti-money laundering (AML) initiative established by the G7.
The FATF will remove countries from the list if they’ve demonstrated adequate improvements to their AML policies –– which is what happened with the UAE in 2024. Conversely, if a gray listed country’s AML standards deteriorate, it may be moved to the FATF’s "black list," which comes with even more complications in accessing international credit lines and investments.
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The FATF decision has not sat well with some Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), including Denmark's Kira Marie Peter-Hansen. She told OCCRP that the Dubai Unlocked project validated their concerns.
“We can now see that our criticism of FATF's decision to remove the UAE from the list of high-risk countries, in terms of economic crime including money laundering, was fully justified,” said Peter-Hansen, who is also vice president of the European Green Party.
>> Read the full story
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Not familiar with Dubai Unlocked? Last month, OCCRP and more than 70 media partners published the Dubai Unlocked investigation based on leaked real estate data. The stories showed that alleged criminals from around the globe flock to Dubai, where they benefit from low tax rates, financial opacity, and a luxurious metropolis.
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🇰🇪 Kenyans Sue Government Over Pesticide Regulations: Former farmers in Kenya say they became seriously ill after working with pesticides at a farm run by a British company, previously known as Homegrown. Some of these agricultural workers and their family members have started a court case against the Kenyan government for allegedly allowing the licensing and manufacturing of such chemical products.
🇰🇪 Kenya Holds Hearings on British Army Abuses: Multiple Kenyans have accused soldiers at the British Army Training Unit in Kenya (BATUK) of human rights violations. For years, the British army insisted it couldn’t be sued in Kenya, claiming “sovereign immunity” from legal action in the country. But a court ruled that Kenyans had the right to sue the army, and three days of hearings took place last month.
OCCRP spoke with residents near the town of Nanyuki about why they think BATUK needs to be held accountable.
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GLOBAL CRIME & CORRUPTION NEWS
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Conservative Media Exec Charged: U.S. authorities arrested an executive at the Epoch Times, a New York-based news outlet critical of the Chinese Communist Party, for his alleged involvement in a $67 million money-laundering scheme designed to benefit himself and the newspaper. Prosecutors said the charges are not related to the Epoch Times’ news-gathering activities.
Former South Africa Minister Arrested: South Africa’s outgoing sports, arts and culture minister Zizi Kodwa appeared in court to face bribery charges that stem from a corruption probe into former president Jacob Zuma's government. Kodwa has denied the charges against him.
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P.S. Thank you for reading the OCCRP newsletter. Feel free to reply with any feedback.
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