The Kiton store in Vienna’s Golden Quarter.
A key player in the Azerbaijani Laundromat -- a slush fund and money-laundering scandal that has already led to the resignation of members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe -- has gained a foothold in Vienna’s “Golden Quarter.”
Read more: Azerbaijani Regime Insider Brings Millions to Vienna’s Golden Quarter
The central London apartment where Mihaela Muruianu once lived.
The daughter of a top Moldovan judge lived large in London thanks to 1.6 million lei (US$ 130,000) that was channeled through two companies involved in the Russian Laundromat -- a massive money laundering scheme that pumped billions of dollars through Moldova from Russia.
Read more: Senior Moldovan Judge’s Daughter Lived In Posh London Flat -- With Tainted Money
Corruption is everywhere. An estimated $1 trillion is paid in bribes and another $2.6 trillion is stolen worldwide every year, according to the United Nations. These incredible sums make up five percent of the world’s economy. And they mostly come out of the pockets of the poorest of the more than seven billion inhabitants of our planet.
Read more: The Faces of the Victims of Corruption
It’s been almost four years since Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s former president, fled the country after the Euromaidan revolution. But the new government’s investigators have so far been unable to establish how much money his rule has cost the country -- or where it went.
Credit: Pivdenkombank web site
Read more: As Yanukovych Fell, Regime-connected Bank Sent Millions Offshore
If you look closely at the details of a 2014 contract to bring Chinese-manufactured locomotives to South Africa, you can tell that something more than transportation was going on.
Photo: Bob Adams, flickr
Read more: Guptas, Big Banks Linked to South African-Chinese Locomotive Deal
It’s hard for anyone to leave Italy’s secretive, clannish ‘Ndrangheta crime families. For women, doubly so.
Dockworkers in Abidjan’s port, Ivory Coast. (Photo: Romain Seaf)
Read more: For Love or Money: An ‘Ndrangheta Daughter on West Africa’s Cocaine Trail
“For decades, a dark cloud of sorts has hovered over the country and reality has been tainted, what was once beautiful has become horrid, what was moral has become immoral. Miss Venezuela … could be no exception, it could not save itself from this plague. Nothing could.”
Goodbye to Miss Venezuela, a novel by Francisco Suniaga
The 2017 Miss Venezuela pageant. (Photo: EFE news agency)
Read more: Miss Venezuela Pageant: Saints and Beauty Make Toxic Mix
A tax-exempt company said it would supply inexpensive food to the people of the DRC. But leaked documents reveal that it received millions from the central bank illegally -- only for the money to disappear into accounts linked to the president’s cronies.
UNICEF distributes food in South Kivu, DRC. (Julien Harneis, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Read more: DRC Company Promised Cheap Food, Delivers Stolen Money
The Paradise Papers is a major new leak of documents from two offshore services firms based in Bermuda and Singapore, as well as from 19 corporate registries maintained by governments in secret offshore jurisdictions. The documents were obtained by the Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which organized a collaborative investigation with dozens of outlets across the world, including the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
Read more: Paradise Papers
In partnership with Nedbank, one of South Africa’s largest banks, companies controlled by or connected to the wealthy and politically-connected Gupta family via its lieutenants extracted more than 1 billion rand (US$ 67.2 million) from Transnet, a state-owned company charged with constructing rail, port, and other transportation infrastructure to serve South African citizens.
Credit: www.transnet.net
Read more: Guptas, Nedbank skillfully extract money from South African state firm
