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July 18, 2025
Hello John,
This week we take you inside Penal Colony No. 10, a large prison camp in Russia’s Republic of Mordovia, where dozens of former prisoners of war from Ukraine were subjected to torture and ill-treatment.

Read on to find out how reporters identified the man referred to by detainees as Доктор Зло (“Dr Evil”) — and for more on the latest in global crime and corruption.


** New Investigations
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** In the Russian Penal Colony, They Called Him ‘Dr. Evil’
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Penal Colony No. 10 is a large complex that sits along a road which cuts through a forest more than 500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, inside Russia.

It’s one of several such facilities in Mordovia, a heavily forested region in central Russia — and a legacy of the Soviet gulag system.

It’s estimated there are some 8,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russia, along with captured Ukrainian civilians. Thousands of POWs have returned home under prisoner swap deals.

Accounts of torture and abuse in these detention facilities have trickled out since the first group arrived back in Ukraine in 2022. Since then, such testimony has become alarmingly common. And one man known only by the moniker bestowed upon him by detainees, Dr Evil, kept coming up in reference to abuses at Penal Colony No. 10.

Read the full story → ([link removed])


** Inside The Story
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When Olya Ivleva from Schemes (Skhemy), the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, set out to document the experiences of prisoners of war inside Russia, she chose to focus on Penal Colony No. 10 because next to nothing was known about it.

“Former POWs were saying very awful things were happening there,” she told OCCRP Weekly.

In April 2025, she obtained a list of former POWs who had been detained at the facility. Of the 177 she reached out to, 50 responded and gave testimony. (Ivleva sent so many messages to former prisoners that at one point the messaging app Telegram blocked her account, assuming she was a spammer.)

They were consistent in painting a picture of a facility where torture and ill-treatment were routine.


** “The memory is very fragile … Prisoners often had bags over their heads, they forgot what was happening visually, but they remember sounds."
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“It was always not easy to ask them again — most of the time they hadn’t seen what was going on.”

This presented challenges for fact-checking, where visual details are often double-checked to ensure consistency in testimony. The prison at the center of the investigation, meanwhile, was inaccessible to outside observers. So Ivleva and colleagues spent months carefully cross-checking their testimony.

They started by arranging all the information they had collected in chronological order. Then they made notes of claims they could verify through other sources, like forensic reports on deaths, prison salary records, and even social media posts made by prison staff.

Photographs taken before and after captivity, which the journalists asked the former prisoners to provide, not only visually enriched the story, but also corroborated the inhumane conditions of their detention and the various forms of torture they had endured.

Once Ivleva established the key claims made by the prisoners about their mistreatment, she cross-checked them by asking all the interviewees to corroborate them. She also asked some questions multiple times, to make sure answers were consistent.

But asking the same question repeatedly risked retraumatizing her subjects if she didn’t approach them with great tact and empathy. “Some of these people didn’t want to talk at all,” she said.

Finally, she identified one key perpetrator of abuses at the facility, who turned out to be a local physician.

“I was surprised how many people were traumatized by just one person, how many human souls suffered because of this one person,” she said, referring to Ilya Sorokin, whom former POWs referred to as “Dr. Evil.”

She says she hopes her work will ultimately spur international attention and create more pressure for Russia to open up penal colonies holding POWs for inspection.

“Russian penal colonies are black holes … People can just disappear. I hope that the world remembers these people, so they have the chance to be released.”

Watch a video about the investigation → ([link removed])
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** More OCCRP Reporting
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** Wiretaps Raise Questions Over Mexican Bank Takeover Bid
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Fresh details have emerged in the high-profile ‘Madre Patria’ investigation in Costa Rica. Abraham Chaves Arias, a fugitive wanted by Costa Rican authorities in connection with the massive fraud probe, was caught on wiretap in May 2023 boasting about making a deal with some of his cousins to buy into a bank in Mexico.

This detail emerged from a case file from Costa Rican prosecutors obtained by the newspaper El Observador, which was then shared with OCCRP.

Days after the wiretapped call, Abraham Chaves Arias’ first cousin Moisés Chaves was appointed deputy director general of Bankaool, a struggling Mexican bank. A company led by Moisés Chaves was also announced as the bank’s new majority investor.

Moisés Chaves said that the investments he has made into the bank were all legal and have nothing to do with his fugitive cousin. He is not named as a suspect in the Madre Patria case.
The Madre Patria investigation centers on what is alleged to be one of Costa Rica’s largest fraud and money laundering schemes, and implicates a vast network of professionals including lawyers, notaries, and public officials.

It involves the alleged theft of high-value properties through falsified documents, and the laundering of tens of millions of dollars through cryptocurrency.

Read the full story → ([link removed])


** Congo Minister's Ties To Lucrative Road Project Revealed
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Cracks and potholes along the RN1 highway, which connects the Democratic Republic of the Congo capital of Kinshasa with the coast, can make for a bumpy ride.

But that’s not the only issue with a half-a-billion dollar upgrade to the tollway that a Chinese consortium has been working on since 2008.

Documents obtained by the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF) and shared with OCCRP and partners reveal that one of the subcontractors working on the road was partially owned by a Congolese politician: then-senator and now DRC Minister of State for Regional Planning Guy Loando.

Loando and his wife held more than one-third of the subcontractor’s shares when it inked its first $25 million roadworks deal in June 2019. He later shifted his family’s stake to his wife’s brother-in-law.
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** Grain Drain: Danish Company’s Affiliate Helps Russian Exports
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An apparent Russian branch of Danish shipping inspection company Baltic Control has overseen and certified shipments at the occupied port of Berdiansk in southeastern Ukraine over the last year and a half, according to an investigation led by OCCRP Ukrainian member center Slidstvo.Info ([link removed]) .

Along with occupied Mariupol, Berdiansk is a key hub used by Russia to ship grain out of occupied Ukraine, a practice the Ukrainian government has called a war crime. All told, the shipments accounted for 170,000 tons of plundered grain.

Dozens of letters related to the grain trade in the Berdiansk port, all dated between March 2024 and May 2025, were obtained by Ukrainian hacktivist group KibOrg.

They were written by a Russian agricultural company based in occupied Crimea and addressed to another Russian company headquartered in Berdiansk, and describe upcoming shipments of grain, requesting loading assistance.

The Ukrainian government says Russia’s export of Ukrainian grain constitutes pillage, a war crime under international law. Independent researchers estimate the country’s losses to be in the billions.

Read the full story → ([link removed])


** Russian Lawyer in Georgia's Ties to Pravfond Exposed
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Fallout from the Pravfond ([link removed]) scandal continues — this time in Georgia, where leaked emails show a Russian human rights lawyer was actively assisting the Kremlin-backed foundation.
Maria Arkhipova arrived in Georgia in late 2021, claiming to have faced political persecution in her homeland.

But since her arrival in the neighboring country, she has sent the foundation at least 12 reports, including one denouncing a Russian blogger she accused of helping organize protests in 2023.

Read the full story → ([link removed]) [link removed]

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** News Briefs
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* A hacker has obtained personal information of clients of a bank in the Seychelles in an apparent extortion attempt ([link removed]) .
* The European Parliament has called for tougher penalties ([link removed]) against top Georgian officials over the country’s democratic backsliding. Lawmakers urged the EU to consider removing Georgia from the SWIFT banking system, and impose sanctions on the country’s de facto ruler Bidzina Ivanishvili. Meanwhile, controversy has erupted ([link removed]) about Justin Timberlake’s scheduled performance in the capital in a concert sponsored by the Georgian government.
* More than 70 Ukrainian and international civil society organizations have condemned the criminal case ([link removed]) against prominent anti-corruption advocate Vitaliy Shabuninas, branding it “politically motivated.” The government has also come under fire over its rejection of veteran investigator ([link removed]) Oleksandr Tsyvinskyi’s nomination to lead a key financial crime body.
* Spanish police have arrested the son of a top Russian defense official ([link removed]) for allegedly laundering millions through luxury real estate purchases, using funds linked to the Troika Laundromat scheme ([link removed]) .
* Also in Spain, police confirmed the identity ([link removed]) of a man shot dead in Barcelona last week. He is Filip Knežević, who allegedly worked as a hitman for a Balkan crime group, carrying out orders to murder members of a rival clan.
* Andorra’s top court this week sentenced 18 executives ([link removed]) of Banca Privada d’Andorra to prison terms ranging from three and a half to seven years for their role in a a 70-million-euro money laundering scheme.
* France and Equatorial Guinea faced off in the International Court of Justice ([link removed]) in a renewed dispute over a Paris mansion seized from Equatorial Guinea’s vice president Teodorín Obiang.
* Transparency International and several members of the European Parliament this week criticized the EU Commission’s decision ([link removed]) to remove the United Arab Emirates from the list of countries that pose a threat to the EU financial system.
* A shadowy oil firm has quietly funneled more than 20 million tonnes of Russian crude — worth over $10 billion — into Central Europe since 2011 ([link removed]) , according to trade data analyzed by OCCRP member center iStories ([link removed]) . Their investigation has turned up ties to Kremlin insiders and allies of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
* Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov has signed a new law imposing fines ([link removed]) for spreading “false information” online. This follows the court-ordered closure of independent broadcaster April TV for allegedly inciting unrest.
* Lithuanian Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas is facing mounting pressure to resign ([link removed]) over recently-exposed ties to offshore companies, as well as involvement with questionable loans and lucrative real estate deals.
* U.K. authorities struck 11,500 firms off the corporate registry ([link removed]) in an effort to fight fraud and money laundering.

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