Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

DIY: The New Amphetamine Trade

By Mujtaba Ali

Last summer, when UK police raided an industrial building in the picturesque market town of Newton-le-Willows, about 20 ...

New Husband of Putin's Ex-Wife Buys Posh Villa in South of

When Lyudmila Putin, 59, divorced Russian President Vladimir Putin and married the director of a Russian non-profit organization, she might ...

The Secret of the St. Princess Olga

In 2013, Oceanco, one of the top yacht builders in the Netherlands, launched a top-of-the-line creation, an 85.6 meter super-yacht ...

Features

Kazakhstan's President Vowed to Crack Down on Asset Theft. What’s the Reality?

President Tokayev has vowed to clamp down on the theft of state assets, and billions of dollars have already been ...

Duplicity and Destitution: How Sierra Leone’s Artisanal Diamonds Fail to Benefit Local Communities

Every day, forty-six year-old Dia walks into the jungle to seek exhausting, dangerous and precarious work in the diamond pits ...

Unwitting Wealth: How a Local Official Scooped up a Georgian Village

The head of the village appears to have abused a new land-titling system intended to help illiterate farmers, using it ...

From Our Member Centers

iStories: Top Russian FSB Official Has Multiple Underworld Ties

Sergei Korolev, who was appointed to a key FSB position earlier this year by President ...

Asset Declarations of Kyrgyz Officials Increasingly Useless as Anti-Corruption...

Kyrgyzstan is the only Central Asian country that publishes its officials’ asset declarations. But the ...

Slovak Businessman Accused of Masterminding Ján Kuciak's Murder Had...

Thousands of Marian Kočner’s text messages, backed by court testimony, provide a remarkable inside look ...

Featured

Son of Longtime Azerbaijani Oil Official Owns Luxurious London Flat Worth Over $20 Million

Until last year, Rovnag Abdullayev headed Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, where he made a modest official salary. Yet his son Rashad purchased an ultra-expensive property in London’s Grosvenor Square at the age of 25.

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Credit Suisse Banked Abramovich Fortune Held in Secret Offshore Companies

Credit Suisse loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to Abramovich’s offshore companies, which used U.S. stocks as collateral, two new leaks reveal. The secretly-owned firms loaned each other massive sums that were mysteriously returned or written off, in what experts said could be a scheme to obscure the origin of the funds.

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FAQ: What's a Proxy? Using Relatives, Shell Companies, and Other Stand-Ins to Hide Illicit Wealth

One of the most effective ways to hide your ownership of valuable assets is to get someone – or something – to stand in as your “proxy.” Bad actors make regular use of these representatives to stash illicit wealth and move it around the world.

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Azerbaijani Strongman’s Business Partner Builds Property Empire in Georgia

Turkish businessman Emin Uchar has made a fortune in Nakhchivan, an autonomous Azerbaijani territory between Iran, Turkey, and Armenia. New documents and interviews provide evidence he may have acted as a proxy for the family of autocrat Vasif Talibov, who ruled Nakhchivan for 27 years before resigning on December 21.

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Bangladeshi Politician Close to Prime Minister Hasina Secretly Owns Over $4 Million in New York Real Estate

Mohammed Abdus Sobhan Miah worked as a cab driver, pizza cook, and drugstore clerk while living in New York City, but a few years after returning to Bangladesh to serve as an aide to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, he started secretly snapping up properties in the city worth millions.

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Romanian Prosecutors Probe China Tobacco for Millions of ‘Disappeared’ Cigarettes

Anti-organized crime prosecutors are investigating China Tobacco in Romania for possible links to smuggling by organized crime groups.

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FAQ: The EU Ruling on Ownership Transparency and What It Means for Journalists

In late 2022, the European Union's top court struck a major blow to ownership transparency. What does it mean for journalists and anti-corruption campaigners?

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OCCRP Names Yevgeny Prigozhin 2022 “Person of the Year” in Organized Crime and Corruption

Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin wins OCCRP's 2022 Person of the Year award, which singles out those who wreak havoc around the world through organized crime and corruption.

Yevgeny Prigozhin

Ex-FIFA Executive Jack Warner Financed “Election Engineering” Campaign in Trinidad

Disgraced former FIFA Vice President Jack Warner personally funded an ethnically divisive disinformation campaign in Trinidad and Tobago designed by an election engineering firm to discourage black Trinidadians from voting.

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Traders Are Sneaking Banned Russian and Belarusian Wood Into the EU By Pretending It’s From Central Asia

Not long after imposing sanctions on wood imports from Russia and Belarus, Europe saw an influx of wood supposedly coming from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Authorities say sanctions-busters are increasingly mislabeling wood as Central Asian so they can keep bringing it in to the EU.

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Page 1 of 71

Intro

Slideshow

Son of Longtime Azerbaijani Oil Official Owns Luxurious London Flat Worth Over $20 Million

Bangladesh MP Faces Scrutiny Following OCCRP Investigation

Panamanian Group Tries to Stop the Only Open-Pit Mine

Croatia Investigates Disappearance of Yacht Linked to Russian Oligarch

OCCRP Names Yevgeny Prigozhin 2022 “Person of the Year” in Organized Crime and Corruption

Credit Suisse Banked Abramovich Fortune Held in Secret Offshore Companies

FAQ: What's a Proxy? Using Relatives, Shell Companies, and Other Stand-Ins to Hide Illicit Wealth

Azerbaijani Strongman’s Business Partner Builds Property Empire in Georgia

Bangladeshi Politician Close to Prime Minister Hasina Secretly Owns Over $4 Million in New York Real Estate

Romanian Prosecutors Probe China Tobacco for Millions of ‘Disappeared’ Cigarettes

FAQ: The EU Ruling on Ownership Transparency and What It Means for Journalists

Resources

OCCRP Aleph

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