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.
Read more: Gold for Visas
A billionaire businessman with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin has bought a Cypriot passport through a controversial scheme that allows rich investors to acquire citizenship and visa-free access to the European Union, according to documents obtained exclusively by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and The Guardian.
The flag of Cyprus, reimagined for the island country’s new investor citizens. Photo: Edin Pasovic / OCCRP
Read more: Russian Billionaire Linked to Putin and Manafort Has Shiny New Cyprus Passport
In late February 2018, Jan Kuciak, a young Slovak investigative journalist, was murdered by a single bullet. His fiancée was killed alongside him.
Read more: A Murdered Journalist's Last Investigation
India’s state-owned Bank of Baroda -- one of the country’s largest -- played a crucial role in the financial machinations of South Africa’s politically influential Gupta family, allowing them to move hundreds of millions of dollars originating in alleged dirty deals into offshore accounts, an investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Project (OCCRP) and The Hindu has found.
![A man walks past the Bank of Baroda’s headquarters in Mumbai, India, May 3, 2016. Photo (c): Reuters/Danish Siddiqui. All rights reserved]](/images/stories/CCWatch/investigations/RTX2E45M.jpg)
A man walks past the Bank of Baroda’s headquarters in Mumbai, India, May 3, 2016. Photo Reuters/Danish Siddiqui.
Read more: India’s Bank of Baroda Played a Key Role in South Africa’s Gupta Scandal
The Estonian branch of Danske Bank, Denmark’s biggest bank, closed the accounts of several companies in 2013 after realizing they had been used by a member of Vladimir Putin’s family and Russia’s intelligence service, the FSB, to launder huge amounts of money, according to a leaked report.
Danske Bank, Tallin, (By Pjotr Mahhonin, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Read more: Report: Russia Laundered Millions via Danske Bank Estonia
Most of us may need one or two bank accounts. But Sinisa Mali, the mayor of Belgrade, appears to have had control over 45, according to a report obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Serbian investigative journalism outlet KRIK.
Sinisa Mali, the current (and likely future) mayor of Belgrade, appears to have had a lucrative time in office. Photo by OCCRP. Some rights reserved.
Read more: The Mayor of Belgrade’s Multiplying Bank Accounts
In response to Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the European Union banned more than 100 Russian officials and businessmen from entering its territory and froze their European assets. The move was meant to punish well-connected Russians who have profited from their country’s aggression against Ukraine.
Boris Rotenberg’s previously unknown property in Eze, France. (Photo: Sophie Balaÿ)
Read more: How to Hide a Russian Fortune on the French Riviera
Major gaps between South African and Namibian legislation that regulates the endangered species trade allowed for the sale of at least 13 white rhino bulls from a South African game park to a Russian big game hunting outfit in Namibia. Nine of these rhinos were found to have died.
An adult and baby rhino at Kruger National Park in South Africa. (Photo: Violator1, Flickr)
Read more: Rhinos Wanted – Dead or Alive
Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, likes to travel abroad.
As a result, he’s missed some far-reaching events in the country he rules from afar. 
Pages from the Cameroon Tribune relating to Paul Biya's travels. OCCRP journalists used the state newspaper as a primary source to chart the president’s numerous foreign trips since taking office. (Image: OCCRP / Authors.) Some rights reserved.
Read more: Paul Biya, Cameroon’s Roaming President
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 money. Either way, high-level connections in his ancestral Poland appear to have protected him.
Read more: Theatre of War
