Greetings From Amsterdam,

The OCCRP newsletter is back in full force with three new investigations to share.

Thank you again to everyone who contributed to the OCCRP SLAPPs Back Fund, which will support journalists who have been targeted with frivolous lawsuits. We’ll let you know how the project develops. 

Now, for the the latest in global crime and corruption:

NEW INVESTIGATIONS

🇧🇩 A Bangladeshi Politician’s Secret New York Properties — Mohammed Abdus Sobhan Miah, a former New York City cab driver, went down an unusual path in becoming a politician, as well as a property baron.

After leaving his cab behind, Miah took up a job as an aide to Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, earning around $12,000 annually. But during this time, he and his wife snapped up nine properties in New York worth roughly $4 million. He never declared the properties, raising questions about what funds had been used to purchase them. >> Read the full story

🌐 The Big Picture: This story covers a topic familiar to OCCRP readers: unexplained wealth. Miah, who’s now a member of Bangladesh’s parliament, has amassed a real estate portfolio with a value that seems hard to square with the earnings of a Bangladeshi political adviser or a New York City cabbie.

🤔 Our Data and Sources: This investigation draws on New York property records and tax and income declarations in the U.S. and Bangladesh.

🇹🇹 Longtime FIFA Exec Funded Dirty Politics in the Caribbean — Former FIFA Vice President Jack Warner funded an ethnically divisive disinformation campaign in Trinidad and Tobago designed by SCL, the parent company of election engineering firm Cambridge Analytica.  >> Read the full story.

🌐 The Big Picture: Trinidad and Tobago’s population is split between Afro-Trinidadians and ethnic Indians.

SCL’s former CEO, Alexander Nix, boasted on a secret recording that the company had devised a campaign to discourage young black people from voting since SCL believed ethnic Indians were more likely to vote for its client, the United National Congress.

Our investigation exposes the hidden and high-profile donor — who is also wanted in the U.S. for corruption — behind this divisive campaign. 

🤔 Our Data and Sources: This investigation is based on leaked emails involving SCL executives and interviews with a key SCL whistleblower. 

🇨🇳 China Tobacco’s Europe Factory Under Investigation — Roughly 4.5 million cigarettes are missing. The shipment, at least on paper, was supposed to go to Russia, but vanished en route.

Now, Romanian authorities are investigating the factory that made the cigarettes, which happens to be owned by the European subsidiary of China Tobacco, the world’s largest tobacco company. >> Read the full story.

❓Not familiar with China Tobacco? The Chinese state-owned conglomerate has cigarette brands that have popped up around the world, including in countries where there is no legal market to sell them. In 2021, OCCRP exposed how smugglers and other organized crime networks helped China Tobacco go global. 

🤔 Our Data and Sources: This investigation is based on Romanian court records and confidential documents obtained by OCCRP. 

THE OCCRP NETWORK

🇷🇺 IStories: Our Russian member center reports on how Russian emigres fleeing conscription and other effects of the Kremlin’s war have boosted economies in neighboring countries — as well as the cost of living.

🇭🇺 Atlatszo: Our Hungarian member center responds to a pro-government op-ed that claimed it was guilty of treason — a common accusation made by Viktor Orban acolytes against NGOs operating in the country.

🇺🇸 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Our Pittsburgher partner reports on how the state of Pennsylvania has become a recruiting hotbed for the right-wing group Oath Keepers.

This is a follow-up to our joint investigation into members of the extremist group who claimed to work for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

OCCRP HAS IMPACT

🇱🇹 Lithuanian Politician Under Scrutiny: The Lithuanian Social Democratic Party expelled a prominent member after OCCRP and partners exposed his role in a sanctions evasion scheme to move wood from Russia and Belarus into the E.U. by pretending it was from other countries.


🇲🇻 Prison Time in Paradise: The Maldives sentenced former president Abdulla Yameen to 11 years in prison on bribery and money laundering charges related to receiving kickbacks from resort developers.

Yameen was the focus of a 2018 OCCRP investigation about how dozens of Maldivian islands were leased to developers in no-bid deals that deprived the Maldivian state of roughly $80 million. 

MORE CORRUPTION NEWS

🇨🇩 DRC Politico Acquitted: In September 2022, OCCRP published an investigation that showed a powerful Congolese presidential advisor, Vidiye Tshimanga, offering a corrupt mining deal to supposed investors. 

Tshimanga was arrested and charged with corruption and influence peddling, but he was acquitted by a court in the Democratic Republic of Congo in December for reasons that remain unclear. 


🇦🇿 Azerbaijani Strongman Steps Down: The longtime leader of Nakhchivan, a​​ secretive exclave often known as “Azerbaijan’s North Korea,” abruptly resigned in December after 27 years in power. 

• Vasif Talibov has used torture and repression to crush dissent throughout his nearly three decades of autocratic rule over Nakhchivan. Last year, OCCRP exposed how his sons held millions of dollars in secret Swiss bank accounts. 

🇪🇺 MEPs May Lose Immunity: European Parliament President Roberta Metsola started the process of waiving legal protections for two MEPs who are accused of accepting bribes in exchange for supporting policies that favored Qatar and Morocco.

MORE ORGANIZED CRIME NEWS

🇸🇩 ‘World’s Most Wanted Human Trafficker’ Nabbed: Sudan arrested an Eritrean national for allegedly running an organized crime network that smuggled thousands of migrants from East Africa to Europe.

Many were kidnapped, extorted and even killed while en route. An official from the United Arab Emirates referred to Kidane Zekarias Habtemariam as the “world’s most wanted human trafficker.”


🇺🇸 American Courts Sentence Neo-Nazi Gang Members to Jail: Dozens of members of the Universal Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang, were sentenced in multiple U.S. federal and state courts on drug trafficking and money laundering charges.