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Greetings from Amsterdam,
Who’s the most corrupt person of 2022? 😈
Every year, OCCRP journalists and readers nominate candidates who they think have done the most to advance corruption in the past year.
Now, it’s time to put forward your candidate for 2022. A panel of judges will review the submissions and select a “winner” at the end of the year.
👉 Nominate Your Corrupt Person of the Year
Person of the Year laureates include: Aleksandr Lukashenko (Belarus, 2021), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil, 2020), Joseph Muscat (Malta, 2019), and Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines, 2017).
Now for the latest from the OCCRP network:
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BAD NEWS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION
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🇪🇺 EU Undercuts Key Transparency Measure — In a stunning reversal, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled to restrict one of the most potent tools against financial secrecy – access to “ultimate beneficial ownership” information. >> Read the full story
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💼 What’s an ultimate beneficial owner (UBO)? It’s the person who stands to profit or benefit from a corporate entity.
When people try to hide their money, they often use complex corporate structures that obfuscate the true owner of a company, and thus the person who’s really profiting — i.e. themselves. In secretive jurisdictions like the Cayman Islands, Delaware, and the British Virgin Islands, this information can be completely concealed behind proxies.
But new EU anti-money laundering regulations were supposed to fix this problem in Europe by requiring all members of the bloc — even ones known for corporate secrecy, like Cyprus and Luxembourg — to create publicly available beneficial ownership registers. Read more about UBOs here.
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Transparency advocates say the ruling pushes the anti-corruption movement back by years. The court cited privacy concerns in its decision, but Moran Harari, a researcher at the Tax Justice Network, pointed out that small domestic businesses in the EU have been publicly disclosing information about their owners for decades.
“This double standard of shielding the rich and powerful from public transparency and accountability is exactly what enables money laundering and tax abuse, and is exactly the type of dogma that governments across the EU have been fighting against by championing public beneficial ownership laws,” said Harari.
OCCRP believes that UBO data should be publicly accessible in every jurisdiction. Our OpenLux investigation, which relied on Luxembourg’s newly public UBO register — only made public due to EU rules — shows how this information can be used to hold governments to account.
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Join the fight against corruption.
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🇰🇬 Prominent Journalist Deported — Our colleague Bolot Temirov, founder of TemirovLIVE, was deported Wednesday to Russia after a court ruled that he falsified documents to obtain a passport from Kyrgyzstan, his place of birth 🤯
Temirov was sent to the airport without even being allowed to gather his belongings or his passport, which was previously annulled by Kyrgyz authorities.
This ruling — like the other accusations against Temirov — appear to be politically motivated moves related to his outlet’s investigation into the family of a prominent security official.
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❓ What is ‘Correspondent Banking?’ — Money might make the world go around, but how does money go around the world?
We explain how banks move money across borders using “correspondent banks” in other countries. It’s a critical part of our global economy, but it can also be exploited by corrupt and criminal figures. >> Read the full explainer
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🇸🇱 No Trickle-Down in Sierra Leone’s Diamond Trade — “They are taking our diamonds but people do not benefit,” a local activist in Sierra Leone told OCCRP.
Diamonds from the Kono District in Sierra Leone have sold for billions on the international market. But the local artisanal miners who dig them continue to make meager wages, and there's little sign their fortunes will improve. >> Read the full story
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🇺🇸 United States & Guatemala 🇬🇹 The U.S. sanctioned a Russian and a Belarusian for their alleged role in bribery schemes involving Guatemala’s mining sector, some of which were exposed in this 2021 investigation.
🇱🇹 Lithuania: Algirdas Komskis, the son of a former deputy speaker of the Lithuanian parliament, was convicted of embezzlement, fraud, and intentional bankruptcy after an investigation by OCCRP member center Siena.lt.
The investigation showed how Komskis’s business was run into the ground once it owed hefty damages to two small children who lost their father in a car accident caused by one of his employees.
🇧🇾 Belarus: From exile, Belarusian political activists have demanded Western powers take action against a business network after OCCRP member centers Siena and the Belarusian Investigative Center exposed that it helped a government ally dodge sanctions.
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From exile, our Russian member center IStories has relentlessly published hard-hitting stories about the war in Ukraine, and its effect on the local population. Here’s some of their recent work.
🇷🇺 ‘A Golden Army’: Reporters contacted several adult children of powerful Russian elites who’ve been able to avoid the battlefield. They gave their thoughts on the war, and whether they’d fight if summoned.
🇷🇺 What Happens to ‘Collaborators’: Using police and court records, IStories reported on the legal consequences for Ukrainians accused of collaborating with Russian forces.
🇷🇺 Will Russia Break Up? In this op-ed, a political scientist argues predictions that Russia will territorially disintegrate are farfetched.
The country’s ethnic regions are still overwhelmingly populated by Russians and have too few independently-minded elites to make a credible secession movement likely, he argues.
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P.S. Thank you for reading the OCCRP newsletter. Feel free to reply with any feedback.
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