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Greetings From Amsterdam,
Malta may be small in terms of landmass and population, but when it comes to corruption scandals, the tiny Mediterranean island hits well above its weight.
One of the country’s biggest scandals involves a former prime minister and a U.S. healthcare company that our journalists have been investigating for months.
Our reporting into this firm — and its peculiar spending habits — lead this edition of OCCRP Weekly:
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U.S. Healthcare Firm Embroiled in Malta Corruption Scandal Spent Millions on Private Spies
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Leaked corporate records reveal that Steward, a Dallas-based healthcare company, paid over $7 million to intelligence firms that conducted surveillance and smear campaigns against its critics — including a former Maltese government minister and one of Steward’s own employees.
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💁♀️ Some Critical Background Info:
What is Steward? Before filing for bankruptcy in May, the company ran over 30 hospitals in the United States, and was beginning to establish a presence overseas. Malta was one of the international markets that Steward targeted. However, things did not end well for Steward or Malta 👇
Malta’s Hospital Scandal: In 2018, Steward took over a 2.1-billion-euro contract to renovate and manage three public hospitals. But last year, a Maltese court annulled the deal, citing an audit that found “collusion between Steward and senior government officials or its agencies.”
The hospital deal was also subject to a criminal inquiry, which resulted in corruption charges against former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat (the 2019 winner of OCCRP’s Corrupt Person of the Year award) and over two dozen others. All have pleaded not guilty.
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🕵️ Tales of the Spied Upon and Smeared
What we found in reports created by various private intelligence firms
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Chris Fearne, Malta’s former health minister, was accused of taking a bribe in a report by the U.K.-based private intelligence firm CT Group, which Steward hired.
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Fraser Perring, the head of a financial research firm critical of Steward, was spied on by a five-person surveillance team, according to a report from a security firm called Greyprism. We don’t know who hired Greyprism. But its report ended up with another U.K.-based intelligence firm, Audere, which regularly corresponded with Steward executives about “false flag” operations against Perring.
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A former senior Steward employee, who the healthcare company worried might leak information, was accused in another report of soliciting a sex worker. This report was authored by a director at Audere.
🇲🇹 Why This Story Matters in Malta: This story reveals even more troubling information about the company at the heart of a major Maltese corruption scandal. Journalists found that Steward appears to have charged the surveillance operations to its Malta subsidiary, whose primary source of income was Maltese taxpayer money from the hospital contract.
🇺🇸 Why This Story Matters in the United States: Steward is auctioning off dozens of its private hospitals in the United States, where the company has struggled to pay vendors. The leaked records show that Steward executives prioritized paying intelligence firms, who sometimes charged as much as $170,000 in a month, even as bills for critical medical services went unpaid.
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This Story Has Impact: In response to our investigation, the Maltese government announced on Tuesday that it would investigate allegations that Steward financed a smear campaign against the former health minister Fearne.
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Egyptian Tycoon Revealed As Owner of Jet in Zambian Gold Scam Case
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Last year, Zambian authorities seized a private jet that a group of Egyptians chartered to smuggle 127 kgs of fake gold into the country. The identity of the plane’s owner had been a mystery, until now.
OCCRP and Sky News revealed the owner to be Ibrahim Al-Organi, a politically connected Egyptian businessman with influence over a number of industries.
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Al-Organi in Gaza: OCCRP published two stories that reveal how companies owned by Organi have allegedly profited from desperation to escape the war in Gaza. One company, Hala Consulting and Tourism, has greatly increased its fee to help people leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing.
Another, a logistics company called Abnaa Sinai, increased the price of importing food and other critical commodities through Rafah, according to Palestinian traders.
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U.K. Crime Agency Asks Court to Permanently Seize Russian Oligarch’s Money
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Britain’s National Crime Agency has for the first time asked a court to permanently seize funds held by a Russian oligarch.
In March 2022, the United Kingdom froze 1.1 million pounds belonging to Petr Aven, a billionaire accused of aiding Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. Now, the agency argues, the state can legally seize this sum as the “proceeds of crime” because Aven allegedly moved the money in violation of sanctions.
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A Panamanian judge acquitted all 28 people charged with money laundering-related offenses in connection with the Panama Papers, a 2016 award-winning investigative series led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Among those acquitted were the two founders of Mossack Fonseca, the now-defunct law firm at the center of the leaked trove of documents that allowed journalists to uncover the hidden wealth of political elites worldwide.
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OCCRP’s Revelations: OCCRP published several investigations as part of the Panama Papers project, including stories exposing hidden wealth controlled by Vladimir Putin’s closest allies.
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Peru: Keiko Fujimori, a powerful Peruvian politician whose father ruled the country in the 1990s, appeared in court this week to face corruption charges that could complicate her expected presidential run in 2026. Fujimori has been accused of laundering millions of dollars to fund her failed presidential campaigns in 2011 and 2016.
Ukraine: NATO will tell the Ukrainian government that it needs to do more to combat corruption before the country can join the defense alliance, the Telegraph reports, citing an unnamed U.S. official.
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Singapore: Officials have introduced legislation that will make it easier for police and prosecutors to pursue cases involving illicit money flows. The new law is seen as a response to a $2.2-billion money laundering scheme that some experts say tarnished the city-state’s reputation as a trusted financial hub.
United States: Some organized crime groups prefer to use Citibank ATMs when depositing large amounts of cash, the Financial Times reports. Experts said many criminals think Citigroup is less likely to scrutinize small deposits made in rapid succession.
Ukraine: Authorities dismantled a criminal group suspected of forging thousands of official documents, including medical records that could have helped young men dodge military conscription. The starting price for documents with holographic security features was the equivalent of $200.
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