Banks often help each other carry out cross-border transactions using a system known as correspondent banking. The process is central to the global financial system, but it also opens up loopholes exploited by criminals, sanctions dodgers, and corrupt politicians.
Read more: FAQ: What is Correspondent Banking?
Every day, forty-six year-old Dia walks into the jungle to seek exhausting, dangerous and precarious work in the diamond pits that pockmark the landscape of Kono District in eastern Sierra Leone.
If he is lucky, he will dig for up to 10 hours in knee-deep mud to receive US$2-3 at the end of the day.
Artisanal diamond mine on the outskirts of Koidu. (Photo: Josef Skrdlik/OCCRP)
Read more: Duplicity and Destitution: How Sierra Leone’s Artisanal Diamonds Fail to Benefit Local Communities
The head of the village appears to have abused a new land-titling system intended to help illiterate farmers, using it to take control of a chunk of former state land for himself, according to an investigation by iFact.
Plots of land in Duzagrama under the control of Mukhtar Ismayilov. (Photo: ifact.ge)
Read more: Unwitting Wealth: How a Local Official Scooped up a Georgian Village
Strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) are meant to silence, intimidate, and financially burden journalists and media organizations. We’re fighting back.
Read more: Battling 41 “SLAPP” Cases, OCCRP Network Launches In-House Legal Defense Fund
Last Friday, tens of thousands of Lebanese viewers watched in horror as a businessman collapsed live on air during a video interview with two prominent investigative journalists.
Protesters demonstrating against the drop in value of the Lebanese pound and the economic crisis facing the country burn tires in Beirut, Lebanon, in March 2021. (Photo: Hussein Kassir/Alamy Stock Photo)
Read more: Opinion: Assigning the Real Blame in a Lebanese Tragedy
Rwandan dissidents have claimed that President Paul Kagame has used dirty tactics to go after his critics abroad. Now, a classified FBI report obtained by OCCRP confirms that Rwanda has been conducting “poison pen” operations on American soil for years.
Read more: Rwanda Fed False Intelligence to U.S. and Interpol As It Pursued Political Dissidents Abroad
A senior police official in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina threatened to rip a journalist’s throat out. Widely hailed as a war hero, Zoran Čegar has spent years in top positions despite repeated scandals, pointing to a pervasive culture of impunity.
Barely restrained by his own lawyer, Čegar lunges at a CIN journalist outside Dubrovnik’s Municipal Courthouse. (Photo: CIN)
Read more: Violent Threats Against Journalists Point to Lingering Impunity in Bosnian Police
Wagner, the Russian mercenary company owned by the infamous businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, secured and maintained its position in Sudan’s gold sector while working closely with companies affiliated with Sudan’s brutal military.
Read more: Documents Reveal Wagner’s Golden Ties to Sudanese Military Companies
On October 26, Kyrgyz authorities blocked the website of Radio Azattyk, the Kyrgyz branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, for a period of two months. The reason was a story about new clashes on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border, in which dozens of people died and thousands were forced to temporarily evacuate. Two days ago, Azattyk’s bank accounts were also frozen without clear explanation — by order of the Kyrgyz secret police, Azattyk’s management learned.
A Radio Azattyk reporter covers a protest against corruption in the Kyrgyz customs service in Bishkek in December 2019. (Photo: Gulzhan Turdubayeva/Radio Azattyk)
Read more: Opinion: Kyrgyzstan’s Move to Block Radio Azattyk Is a Sign of Trouble — For the Government
In the world’s only commercial lion-farming industry, centered in South Africa’s Free State, animals are reared in terrible conditions so they can be slaughtered for their bones. Reporters tracked the lion bone supply chain all the way to Laos, where one of the world’s most notorious wildlife trafficking groups has been buying up big cat skeletons for years.
Read more: Inside South Africa’s Brutal Lion Bone Trade
