Our Troika Laundromat project won this year’s Sigma Award for best data-driven reporting.

Greetings from Sarajevo, 

We have three new investigative projects to share, including one that is close to our hearts, commemorating the second anniversary of the murder of our colleague Ján Kuciak. But first, we have some big news about one of the largest investigations ever to come out of the OCCRP network.

Our Troika Laundromat project won this year’s Sigma Award for best data-driven reporting. For those who don’t know, the Troika Laundromat is what we’ve dubbed a complex network of companies we identified by analyzing leaked bank data, used to funnel billions of dollars out of Russia. In total, 23 news organizations published stories based on the leak we obtained of 1.3 million bank transactions. Each of these outlets won this award alongside OCCRP.

Now, for the latest in the fight to expose global corruption: 

NEW PROJECTS

How corruption empowered the man accused of killing Ján and Martina – For the second anniversary of the murder of Slovakian journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancee, Martina Kušnírová, we published an investigation about the man accused of ordering the assassination: Marian Kočner. 

The wealthy businessman had a long history of suspected criminality before he was charged with killing a journalist. Yet he avoided prosecution for decades thanks to high-ranking judges and political influencers in Slovakia who did his bidding, often in exchange for bribes. For many in Slovakia, the ongoing murder trial is a test to see if the judicial system that allowed Kočner to operate with impunity has changed enough to yield justice. 

Meet a company formation agent suspected of helping organized crime in the UK – London has become a haven for money laundering, in part because it’s so easy to form a company in the UK — especially with the help of unscrupulous formation agents. With the Investigative Reporting Project Italy, our Italian member center, we revealed how one formation agent, Fabio Castaldi, allegedly helped move money for suspected mafia groups to London. 

The State Capture Papers – Last year, we published multiple investigations based on a leak of 3 million documents from Trillian, an investment firm linked to the “state capture” scandal in South Africa. Responsible journalists can now access these leaked files upon request.

OCCRP IN THE NEWS

WaPo defends our partner in Azerbaijan, who still can’t leave the country – After being imprisoned for 1.5 years, Khadija Ismayilova is serving an additional five years of probation and is banned from leaving the country. She was sentenced after publishing articles alleging corruption within Azerbaijan’s ruling elite. Some of them were also implicated in our 2017 Azerbaijani Laundromat investigation.

OCCRP co-founder shares what it’s like to be a journalist in a UK court – When we published the Azerbaijani Laundromat investigation, an Azerbaijani politician decided to target our co-founder Paul Radu – even though he didn’t report or edit the content they claimed was defamatory. Why? Probably because Paul is an EU citizen, which means they were able to sue him in the UK, where journalists rarely win libel cases even when their reporting is completely accurate (as ours was). In an article for the Global Investigative Journalism Network, Paul described what it was like to be the victim of this potentially censorious practice known as “libel tourism.”

THE OCCRP NETWORK

MORE NEWS IN GLOBAL CORRUPTION

World Bank grapples with study linking foreign aid to corruption – Elites in developing countries appear to be siphoning off aid money and funneling it into private offshore accounts, according to a study the World Bank released after accusations that it tried to bury the research.

Monaco criticized for not tackling money laundering – Monaco has so far adopted only two of 16 recommendations made in 2017 to curb corruption in politics and the legal system, according to the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body