|
Last week, a former member of Germany’s Bundestag was convicted for bribing officials on behalf of Azerbaijan.
The landmark ruling was the latest example of the enduring impact of OCCRP’s Azerbaijani Laundromat investigation, which revealed a $2.9 billion money-laundering operation and slush fund that was used by the country’s elites and enabled by shell companies registered in the United Kingdom.
Published with over a dozen partners in 2017, the investigation exposed how some of the funds from the so-called Laundromat were used to pay off politicians in Europe in a bid to burnish Azerbaijan’s reputation as it faced international criticism for systematic human rights abuses. The German lawmaker was one such recipient.
OCCRP co-founder Paul Radu recalls that the project began with a Signal call from a colleague at Denmark’s Berlingske.
“They said, ‘We have a dataset that might be of interest to you’,” he told OCCRP Weekly.
“I didn’t expect an eight-year long impact, to be honest,” Radu said. “But, the wheels of justice move slowly.”
He notes that the multiple court cases stemming from the Azerbaijan Laundromat in recent years have led to more reporting, and further impact.
“We kept the focus and this paid off. This is one of the characteristics of OCCRP and our project: We don’t let go and we keep following, and that’s where you understand the issue in its depth and you can reveal in a meaningful sense to the public what’s going on.”
More broadly, Radu says the reporting helped define “how we understand the criminal services industry.”
“These [systems] were designed ahead of time for money laundering,” he said. “It’s not that the laundromats are an afterthought.”
Yet the stakes for local reporters in Azerbaijan were — and are — high. Just one collaborator — who had recently been released from prison — chose to work openly under her name.
Journalists in the country continue to face intense persecution, amid an ongoing crackdown that has seen scores jailed.
Radu notes that the Laundromat’s customers, including oligarchs and kleptocrats alike, have become even more sophisticated in their efforts to silence journalists.
“Now they're using these attack packages that are put together by lawyers, where you have journalists attacked with their reputation, and possibly, building kompromat, then bribery attempts, then court cases, then perhaps violent actions against the journalist,” he said. “So there's an arsenal at the disposal of the kleptocracy.”
However, investigative journalism which exposes wrongdoing is worth it, he believes.
“It might be 10 years from the point where you report it, but it always pays off, and it affects corrupt systems in ways that we sometimes cannot even grasp.”
|
