All Projects

Euros to the East

In collaboration with Danwatch, a Danish investigative research center, OCCRP looked into an EU program that provided surveillance gear, patrol vehicles, and other equipment to Belarusian and Ukrainian authorities with the goal of strengthening the two countries’ border on the eastern edge of Europe.

The Chávez Man and His Millions

Venezuela's economy is in ruins, but there are still fortunes to be made. One of these — estimated to be worth $100 million — is that of a man named Carlos Luis Aguilera Borjas. And he's not just a businessman. For years Aguilera served the country's revolutionary leader, Hugo Chávez, as a bodyguard, later rising to lead its security agency. How did he...

Death On The Border

Seven months ago, three employees of the Ecuadorian newspaper El Comercio were abducted in the Mataje River region on the border between Ecuador and Colombia. After almost three weeks in captivity, reporter Javier Ortega, photographer Paul Rivas, and their driver, Efrain Segarra, were executed by the Oliver Sinisterra Front, a group of former FARC guerillas and drug...

Dubai’s Golden Sands

Dubai has transformed itself into an extravagant metropolis where the police drive Lamborghinis and edible gold ice cream costs US $800 a scoop.

Tajikistan: Money by Marriage

Since marrying one of the seven daughters of the president of Tajikistan, a young businessman has built an empire that stretches across the country. An OCCRP investigation show how unlimited political power leads to business success in one of Central Asia's poorest countries.

Birth and Death in Venezuela's Time of Hunger

Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis is threatening those who carry the future in their bellies. Pregnant women are going without adequate food or medical attention in the midst of a national economic emergency. The government insists on attributing the crisis to an external plot to overthrow it, while the opposition blames the administration for inefficiency and...

The Daphne Project

In October 2017, Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was brutally killed by a car bomb just meters from her home. The investigation into her killing is ongoing, but there is little doubt that she was murdered because of her work. With a brazen, unapologetic and uncompromising style, she denounced corruption, nepotism, clientelism, and all kinds of criminal...

Gold for Visas

For refugees and poor migrants, travel can be terrifying, with no guarantee of a welcome at the end. For the one percent,​ ​it's a different story, as a growing number of cash-strapped countries invite them in​ ​—​ ​as long as they bring plenty of money.

Theatre of War

In just a few years, Pierre Konrad Dadak rose from a small-time Parisian fraudster to become a top representative for one of Central Europe’s biggest arms companies. The Spanish police who arrested Dadak believe he is a global arms trafficker, in bed with the French gangsters. His former business partners say his arms deals were fakes, designed to defraud them of...

War Dog Millionaire

Jaroslav Strnad, the chief financial backer of the Czech president, has been secretly snapping up arms stockpiles and factories throughout the Balkans with the help of a cast of notorious local characters. The buy-up has included tens of millions of rounds of old ammunition of a type so unreliable that a previous attempt to sell it inspired a Hollywood movie.