5 April 2023
Transnational crime and corruption have become far more sophisticated compared to when I started my career as an investigative reporter. But I’ve also noticed something encouraging.
Throughout the world, I see more and more citizens — like you — who want to learn about how these financial criminals operate and how they can be stopped.
In case you’re new to OCCRP, I wanted to share a few of our major investigations to give you a better sense of the breadth of our work.
– The Pegasus Project: Working with Forbidden Stories, Amnesty International, and 16 media partners around the world, this wide-ranging investigation showed how Pegasus spyware was used by governments to spy on journalists, activists, and politicians.
– Riviera Maya Gang: How a Romanian criminal syndicate stole over $1 billion from rigged ATMs mainly in tourist hotspots in Mexico. (Our reporting is being adapted into a dramatic series).
– Lebanon’s Offshore Governor: With Daraj.com, we revealed that Lebanon’s central bank governor, Riad Salame, has almost $100 million in hidden wealth of assets and investments overseas.
– Rosewood Plunder: We exposed how foreign companies and local elites profit from the illegal logging of Rosewood in Namibia and Madagascar.
– Laundromats: OCCRP and partners have uncovered three large-scale money laundering schemes, which we call “Laundromats,” that allowed elites to secretly buy assets and influence around the world.
- Azerbaijani Laundromat: A $2.9 billion scheme that allowed Azerbaijan’s ruling elite to secretly pay off European politicians, buy luxury goods, launder money, and otherwise benefit themselves.
- Troika Laundromat: Reporters obtained one of the largest releases of banking information ever — involving some 1.3 million leaked transactions — to show how a once prestigious bank helped influential Russians channel billions out of the country as well as secretly buy stakes in state-owned firms.
- Russian Laundromat: The first Laundromat we uncovered moved $20.8 billion to over 5,000 companies in 96 countries. The scheme involved creating fake debt in some companies, which was then paid off by other firms in the Laundromat.
If you value this type of hard-hitting journalism, please consider supporting our work by becoming an OCCRP Accomplice.
The above was reported in Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
