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Hello John,
Every day, in nondescript offices and conference rooms around the world, an invisible arms race is underway. On one side are people paid to move dirty money without detection. On the other are compliance officers, auditors, and forensic accountants trying to stop them. This is not a static landscape. Launderers keep devising new mechanisms to make illicit transfers look legitimate, while their opponents keep looking for ways to shut them down. There’s hardly a better illustration of this than our latest Venezuelan investigation, which offers a rare opportunity to listen in as alleged money launderers plot their next moves. Thanks to a secret recording, we were able to listen to a conversation that a former Venezuelan oil official, a lawyer, and three financiers in Madrid thought was taking place behind closed doors. Their division of labor — one moves money “from A to B,” another designs tax structures and creates “lots of documentation,” and a third operates a payments pipeline with “very light KYC” — illustrates the sophistication of the craft. |
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| The men discuss moves and counter-moves. Some of the money was sent using a fake contract, and the bank flagged a discrepancy. The Venezuelan official warns that the compliance failure could escalate: “This is like dominos. If you knock one down, they all fall.” So they pivot: One suggests sending the funds to the U.K. through Cyprus, where compliance procedures offer “a certain amount of flexibility that we don’t have in England.” There’s “significant concern” about money laundering across the continent, he explains — but not to worry. His team “invests a lot in … research so that we can carry out operations without the machines detecting it.” Most complex of all, the men discuss a fake bond swap disguised as a trade that can take up to a year to resolve — a scheme so audacious one financial crime expert describes it as “expert-level money laundering.” In the end — at least in this case — law enforcers got the upper hand, and they won using old-fashioned police work: The men were being recorded by a participant wearing a wire. Read the story for the details → |
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| The analysis above is a free preview of our upcoming OCCRP PRO membership, a new offering tailored to professionals who rely on our investigations for work in finance, law, compliance, risk management, policy, and related fields. Interested to learn more? Let us know and tell us what you need! Your feedback will directly shape the services we build. |
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| | | White Collars, Dirty Hands |
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| Venezuela’s vast oil riches have fueled cycles of boom and bust, giving rise to an urban middle class — and, later, to an echelon of elites who amassed enormous fortunes as the country descended into dire poverty. Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that a thirst for oil drove his administration’s controversial capture of former president Nicolás Maduro. As Venezuela enters this uncertain new chapter, we present “White Collars, Dirty Hands,” a new podcast that takes a deep dive into the corruption at the heart of the country’s oil sector. This podcast was originally produced in Spanish. But in light of recent events, we wanted to share it with a wider audience, and have reproduced the series in English using AI translation. You can find the first translated episode below, or listen to the original version in Spanish here. The series examines how $1.2 billion was embezzled from state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) between 2014 and 2018 by a circle of insiders who spent the cash on real estate, yachts, and other luxury assets. In an English-language investigation, we also dig into a secret 2017 recording we obtained, in which a coterie of financiers discuss the mechanics of money laundering, offering an unprecedented look inside a shadowy and ever-evolving industry of enablers who make this type of corruption possible. |
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| Episode 1: Hola, CarmeloJoin exiled Venezuelan journalist Laura Weffer as she tracks down a former high-level official in Venezuela's oil ministry, who sits at the heart of a billion-dollar money laundering conspiracy. Listen to the original version in Spanish here, or an English-language AI translation here →
From OCCRP and the Colombian production company La No Ficción. |
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| | | Nigerian Pension Reformer Bought US and UAE Properties Before Money Laundering Conviction |
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| After Nigeria’s top pension fund official was convicted of money laundering in 2021, the authorities seized at least 20 properties. However, it appears they didn’t realise the full extent of Abdulrasheed Maina’s portfolio: reporters have discovered four additional properties purchased “cash in hand.” Three properties were purchased in the U.S. during his 2010 to 2013 tenure as chair of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms. Following his removal from the role, he purchased an apartment in the United Arab Emirates. Maina was sentenced in 2021 to a maximum of eight years in prison, and ordered to pay 2.1 billion naira (about $5 million at the time). He received an early release in February 2025, and continues to proclaim his innocence. Read the full story → |
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| Stories Have ImpactThis week, former German MP Axel Fischer was handed a suspended sentence of one year and two months for accepting tens of thousands of euros in bribes from Azerbaijan in exchange for promoting Baku's interests at Europe’s top human rights body. The ruling follows the 2025 conviction of former MP Eduard Lintner on bribery charges. Both men were implicated in the so-called Azerbaijani Laundromat, a massive money-laundering scheme exposed in 2017 by OCCRP and partners, which revealed how Azerbaijan’s ruling elite used a $2.9 billion slush fund to enrich themselves and pay European politicians to whitewash the country's image amid growing international criticism of its human rights record. |
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| | | Oil Tankers Going Dark Between Russian and Georgian Ports |
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| Amid sanctions, Russian oil tankers have been switching off their Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) on the Black Sea in a bid to obscure their routes, a new investigation has found. Reporters from iFact, one of OCCRP’s Georgian member centers, analyzed maritime traffic data from 2024 to 2026, looking at 19 tankers that departed Russian ports and turned off their AIS once in open water — a violation of international maritime law. Journalists were able to confirm that at least 11 of the tankers that departed Russia and whose AIS signal consistently disappeared after departure were carrying oil shipments. A former senior official with Georgia’s Border Police and Coast Guard told iFact he had documented numerous instances in which Georgian ports and waters were used “to evade sanctions through various tricks and means.” “Vessels switch off AIS signals, falsify port data, and use various tactics to conceal their movements,” said Gocha Beridze, the former official. He also described observing ships loitering off the coastline, raising “great suspicion” of ship-to-ship oil transfers, a common method for skirting sanctions. Georgian officials insist that sanctioned Russian oil and petroleum products are not transported through the country's territory. The Maritime Transport Agency told iFact that all vessels entering Georgian ports are subject to “strict control, in full compliance with international law and national legislation.” Read the full story → |
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| | American Women Who Fled Fiji's Grace Road Cult Ready to Return to Give Evidence |
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| Two American women who escaped the Fiji-based doomsday sect Grace Road say they are willing to return to the Pacific island nation to testify against the group, which could help revive a long-stalled human trafficking investigation. “I want Grace Road to know that I’m not afraid of them anymore,” one of the women told OCCRP. “They have no power over me.” The women fled separately after enduring what they allege were years of violence, abuse and slave-like work conditions. They filed separate complaints with local police in late 2024, and early 2025. OCCRP has previously reported how the 300-strong sect, largely made up of ethnic Koreans, became one of Fiji’s most powerful business entities. One of the victims alleged she gave free treatments, such as massages, to prominent local Fijians including former Prime Minister Frank Bainimiarama. Legal representatives for Grace Road told OCCRP the group “categorically denies” all allegations against it. Last year, we reported that Fiji could face a potential downgrading to the U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report’s lowest tier over its inaction on the Grace Road case. Read the full story → |
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| | Europe’s Top Rights Court: Azerbaijan Prosecuted Journalist to Silence Her |
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| The European Court of Human Rights this week ruled that Azerbaijan’s 2015 prosecution of investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova was intended “to silence and punish her for her journalistic activities.” Ismayilova is an award-winning veteran journalist who has spent her career exposing high-level corruption in Azerbaijan, including the business dealings of the family and associates of President Ilham Aliyev. She worked with OCCRP, on several key investigations, and was a longtime journalist with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In its judgment, the court said the Azerbaijani authorities were “driven by improper reasons” in ordering her arrest in December 2014, and that her subsequent conviction for tax evasion and “illegal entrepreneurship” for working without media accreditation was arbitrary, the result of an unfair trial. The European Court of Human Rights has previously ruled in Ismayilova’s favor against Baku in other cases, including judgments on her initial arrest, pre-trial detention, and an “unjustified and flagrant invasion of her private life” during a public smear campaign. Under the most recent ruling, the court has ordered Azerbaijan to pay Ismayilova 12,000 euros (over $14,000) in moral damages and an additional 4,000 euros (over $4,700) for legal costs. Ismayilova continues to face restrictions, including a travel ban issued in 2024, as part of an ongoing crackdown on independent media. Since November 2023, Azerbaijani authorities have arrested at least 28 journalists. Read the full story → |
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| | | Criminal networks are increasingly deploying high-tech tools, from drones to submarines, to smuggle cocaine into Europe, according to a new report from Europol. A Dutch court has sentenced a 42-year-old Eritrean national to 20 years in prison for leading a criminal organization, human trafficking, and extortion of migrants in Libya, where hundreds of migrants were “rounded up and detained in warehouses … in appalling conditions” between 2014 to 2018. Norwegian prosecutors have charged two individuals and a subsidiary of Oslo-listed PetroNor E&P with “grand corruption” over tens of millions of dollars in bribes paid to people close or related to Congo’s president to secure oil licenses. The 2018 murders of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and fiancée Martina Kušnírová are set to return to trial for a third time, after Slovakia’s Supreme Court overturned a 2023 verdict. A Nepalese court has ordered the arrest of six executives from three prominent mountain rescue agencies alleged to have orchestrated fake helicopter rescues of foreign tourists in order to siphon off $19.7 million through insurance fraud. Nigeria’s former petroleum minister Diezani Alison-Madueke’s trial has begun in London, where she faces five counts of accepting bribes and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery — offenses which all took place during her time as oil minister from 2010-2015, and during her tenure as chair of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Georgia’s ruling party appears set to push through sweeping amendments that could grant the government direct control over most foreign funding for civil society groups, independent media, and politically active organizations, and criminalize non-compliance. German authorities have raided the offices of Deutsche Bank in connection with a money laundering probe related to transactions made between 2013 and 2018, “based on an allegedly late filing of a suspicious activity report.”
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