Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev has spent billions on drawing the world’s attention to the European Games in his Caspian seaside capital of Baku.

As the $ 8 billion spectacle of the European Games winds down to a close on Friday, the world has gotten a close-up look at the oil-rich nation of Azerbaijan.

When Azerbaijan needed a good lobbyist in Washington, it built one—and ever since, she has gone out of her way to hide her deep connections to the ruling regime.

One of the enduring mysteries in Azerbaijan’s crackdown on human rights has been why countries like the US have been so slow to condemn it.

In Azerbaijan today, at least 80 people are jailed on what human rights groups say are bogus, politically motivated charges.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev is a man who likes a comfortable home.

Azerbaijan hopes to dazzle the world with the first-ever European Games, opening with a lavish ceremony in Baku.

As journalists from across Europe descend on the oil-rich state, President Ilham Aliyev is banking on them to show the ancient city’s transformation to a 21st century playground.

When Azerbaijani investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova was jailed in Baku last December on trumped-up charges, her colleagues believed the real reason for her incarceration was her reporting on rapacious business deals involving the family and friends of President Ilham Aliyev.

Over the past few years we have seen the huge potential of data and document mining in investigative journalism. Tech savvy networks of journalists such as the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) have teamed together for astounding cross-border investigations, such as OCCRP’s work on money laundering or ICIJ’s offshore leak projects. OCCRP has even incubated its own tools, such as VIS, Investigative Dashboard and Overview.

OCCRP launches “Killers Inc.,” an  independently produced investigative documentary solely produced by OCCRP staff. The film is the result of a two-year, multi-country investigation examining a violent feud between businessmen connected to the Kremlin, and the criminal groups and assassins-for-hire tasked with settling their scores.