October 3, 2025

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Doctors stripped of their medical licenses in one country can easily relocate and practice in another.

That’s the headline finding of ‘Bad Practice,’ our latest major cross-border investigation. Despite significant data gaps, our reporters uncovered over a hundred examples, primarily in Europe.

One doctor who lost his U.K. license for sexually abusing dozens of patients was still free to practice in his native Romania.

The individual cases are alarming enough, but they’re also symptomatic of a larger problem: A deficit in the European Union’s capacity to govern.

It’s not just that there’s already an EU mechanism meant to address this very problem — it has been in existence for over 15 years.

The Internal Market Information System (IMI) was created in 2008, a few years after the EU’s largest-ever expansion, to help members of the growing single market coordinate professional licensing.

Exchanging alerts about restrictions and prohibitions was one of its core functions.

But as our reporters found, the system is not used effectively or consistently. Many countries rarely or never file alerts about doctors. (A large majority of those sent over the last nine years were from the U.K., which withdrew from the system after Brexit).

And even when they are sent, the IMI alerts contain limited information, are difficult to follow up on, and are not even required to be read.

Authorities in several countries have already launched new investigations and called for improved coordination in the wake of our report.

But the profound weakness of such a core feature of European integration raises disturbing questions about the EU’s capacity to effectively regulate the world’s largest bloc of democracies.

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New Investigation

Bad Practice: Banned Doctors Who Cross Borders

Doctors who have been stripped of their medical licenses due to serious wrongdoing can — and do — relocate internationally and continue to treat patients.

The months-long “Bad Practice” investigation by OCCRP, Norway’s VG, The Times of London and media partners in dozens of countries, identified more than 100 doctors across Europe and elsewhere who have had their licenses revoked in at least one jurisdiction, but are currently licensed in another.

The majority of them are currently practicing as doctors.

These included doctors accused of sexual assault, carrying out botched surgeries, and illegally selling prescription medications.

The fallout from the investigation has already begun, with health authorities around Europe calling for urgent changes to protect patients, and regulators in several countries confirming they are investigating individual physicians.

Read the full story →

OCCRP Has Impact

In July, we and partners at RFE/RL published an investigation into 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. Reporters managed to identify a sadistic prison doctor whom  detainees knew only as Доктор Зло (“Dr Evil”).

The work was cited last month by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in Russia.

Eyes On: Georgia

Tensions are running high in Georgia ahead of local elections and planned mass demonstrations this weekend. With several key opposition leaders behind bars, the two largest opposition parties are boycotting the October 4 vote. It will also be the first election in decades to take place without meaningful independent oversight.

Major international election monitoring bodies will not be taking part. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said they received their invitation too late to coordinate a monitoring mission.

“Free, fair and competitive elections are not possible under the current conditions,” Levan Natroshvili, executive director of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy, told OCCRP.

His NGO has had its bank accounts frozen by a court order, making it impossible to receive the grants necessary to coordinate an observation mission.

The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association said that on October 4, for the first time in the group’s 31-year history, it would not be able to carry out an election monitoring mission, citing “the regression of democracy, repressive policies against civil society organizations and the media, the adoption of restrictive laws, as well as the deterioration of the legal framework for election observers.”

Less than a week out from the vote, the vast majority of observers registered with the Central Election Commission were from groups seen as linked to, or favourable toward the ruling Georgian Dream party.

The Georgian Dream-led government continues to tighten restrictions on media and civil society groups, with more than 60 organizations ordered to disclose donor and grant data under a new law.

The authorities have intensified their crackdown on Transparency International (TI) Georgia, summoning its head along with other NGO leaders for questioning on charges of “sabotage, collusion with foreign powers, and financial crimes.”

Earlier this week, TI Georgia released findings on the finances of pro-government channel Imedi TV, which they said has been funded by Georgian Dream founder and oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili since at least 2018. The channel is financed through preferential loans, and had accumulated losses of 388 million Georgian lari, or around $144 million by the end of 2023, according to TI Georgia.

In a statement released Thursday to mark the anniversary of Georgian Dream’s 2012 election victory, Ivanishvili warned that October 4 may be used by “unmasked internal and external enemies” as an opportunity to sow chaos.

Prominent opera singer and opposition figure Paata Burchuladze earlier this year declared that October 4 would be the day of “Ivanishvili’s peaceful overthrow,” as well as a day of “national assembly” allowing citizens to “take power into their own hands” and not just a day of protest but “a day of historic victory.”

On Wednesday, the State Security Service of Georgia announced they had detained United National Movement member Zviad Kuprava over a video in which he said “our tactical aim is to foil the Russian special operation on 4 October.”

Last month, UNM political council chair Levan Khabeishvili was arrested on bribery charges after offering the police money to stand aside and not disperse protesters. He has also been charged with “resistance, threats, or violence against authorities,” after he publicly called for a coming “peaceful revolution.”

OCCRP Exclusive

Restaurateurs Face Probe Over Sales of Sanctioned Dual-Use Chemicals to Russia

Russian-Spanish dual national Maria Oleinikova runs a chic tapas bar in Barcelona, as well as exporting alcohol to Russia.

Last year, Oleinikova and her two children were arrested as part of “Operation Test Tube,” in which 13,000 kilograms of chemicals were seized at the Port of Barcelona.

They have since been released, but are now under investigation for “smuggling banned substances,” along with nine other suspects. So far, they have not been charged.

At the time of the raid, some shipments had already been sent to Russia, including diethylamine, a chemical involved in the manufacturing of the nerve agent VX.

OCCRP reporters viewed import data which showed that a Russian company majority-owned by Oleinikova, Catrosa Reactiv, has received dozens of shipments of sanctioned chemicals from companies under investigation in Spain.

Leaked transaction data shows Catrosa Reactiv’s clients include weapons developers, including the state institute that created the nerve agent Novichok.

Read the full story →

More OCCRP Reporting

Son of Palau Senate Leader Caught up in Fiji Drug Sweep

Lagomarsino Baules, the son of Palauan pro-China senator Hokkons Baules, has been arrested in an anti-drug operation in Fiji.

Baules was arrested alongside Ginna Mukunghoa Choi, a citizen of the Federated States of Micronesia, who previously lived in Palau but was blacklisted earlier this year as an “undesirable alien” for alleged “associations with known drug traffickers,” according to a document from Palau’s National Security Coordination Office obtained by OCCRP.

This comes amid growing concerns over the expanding influence of Chinese-linked criminal networks in the Pacific.  

Read the full story →

Thin Red Line: China Cracks Down on Border Scam Syndicate

A Chinese court this week handed down death sentences to 16 members of the Ming crime family, which has operated scam compounds in the Kokang region of Myanmar’s Shan State, a semi-autonomous enclave near the border with China where cyber fraud, drug trafficking, prostitution, and illegal gambling have flourished.

The syndicate members were convicted of causing financial losses exceeding the equivalent of some $1.4 billion, as well as over their roles in more than a dozen deaths, some of whom were Chinese nationals killed as they tried to escape the scam centers where they were held captive and forced to work.

Members of the clan belonged to a militia aligned with Myanmar’s junta and which has historically enjoyed Chinese backing. However, analysts say the harsh sentences demonstrate that China is not willing to tolerate scam centers on its borders, nor crimes against its citizens.

Read the full story →

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News Briefs

• A Russian woman accused of lying to the FBI and of transporting women across state lines for prostitution avoided pre-trial imprisonment last week, after a federal judge rejected prosecutors’ requests that she be jailed for sending dozens of drunken text messages to an FBI agent.
  

• Myanmar’s military hired private companies to demolish villages, clear land and build security infrastructure in the wake of its brutal 2017 expulsion of over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from Rakhine State to neighbouring Bangladesh, according to a new U.N. report.
  

• Algeria’s former Labor Minister Tijani Hassan Haddam was sentenced this week to seven years in prison for embezzling roughly $45 million between 2015 and 2019, during his tenure as director of the National Social Security Fund.
  

• Ukraine’s crackdown on graft continues, with prosecutors this week sending a $7 million customs fraud case to court. Some suspects have already been convicted through plea deals.
  

• A parliamentary report on links between a housing crisis and property development practices in Burkina Faso was “deliberately withheld” to protect members of the former ruling party, a leading anti-corruption group alleged this week.
  

• Nearly a thousand people joined a so-called “safari tour” last weekend outside Hatvanpuszta, the historic manor of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, with images of anti-corruption protesters dressed up as zebras going viral on social media.
  

• Leaked emails from the Mexican defense ministry obtained by OCCRP revealed an “Air Bridge” from Venezuela to Belize, in which private jets regularly delivered drug shipments that were then transported on to the U.S.
  

• Israel’s unlawful interception in international waters of vessels from a high-profile humanitarian aid flotilla bound for Gaza has unleashed protests across Europe.
  

• Montenegro has temporarily suspended the extradition of a convicted money launderer, citing concerns over the possibility he could face torture or inhumane treatment at the hands of Chinese authorities.
  

• At least two people have been killed in Morocco this week in youth-led protests, amid outrage over government corruption and the billions spent on 2030 World Cup infrastructure at the expense of hospitals, schools, and other public services.
  

• Prosecutors in Montenegro have filed an indictment against an additional five people suspected of involvement in a major international cocaine smuggling group dismantled in July last year.

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