Kyrgyz authorities are investigating a custom officer who could be involved in a scheme journalists of OCCRP, RFE/RL and Kloop revealed last year that saw millions of dollars being illegally funneled out of the country.

Internal documents detail investigations into inflated contracts and IT systems delays that hurt the country’s exporters.

Two Kyrgyz news media outlets, Radio Azattyk and Kloop, along with journalist Ali Toktakunov are standing trial on Wednesday as they face a prolonged lawsuit filed by the Matraimov family for exposing its involvement in a US$700 million money laundering operation. 

The Abdukadyr family made millions on the back of an illicit Central Asian cargo business. Now we know where the money ended up: exclusive villas, gleaming high-rises, and phantom investments across the world.

A Kyrgyz court unfroze on Friday the bank accounts of two media outlets and a journalist after they were briefly blocked by a libel suit an influential family filed over an article that revealed their alleged involvement in a corruption scheme.

A member of the Kyrgyzstan Parliament is proposing further government investigation following reports by OCCRP and its media partners that the country has harbored money laundering that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and has cost the lives of currency couriers crossing its borders.

For years, a network of informal couriers has funneled millions of dollars out of Kyrgyzstan in cold, hard cash. The underground money transfer system fuels corruption, destroys transparency — and has claimed people’s lives. Here’s how it works.

As the season’s first snow fell, nearly a thousand people marched peacefully in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek on Monday in response to arecent investigation by RFE/RL’s Radio Azattyk, OCCRP, and its local member center, Kloop.

“I’m Aierken Saimaiti,” the man said. “Between 2011 and 2016, I transferred more than $700 million from Kyrgyzstan.”

Between 2000 and 2008, authorities in Kyrgyzstan divided up a large swath of Ataturk Park, a beloved green space in the country’s capital, Bishkek, and handed it out to 173 people — many of them wealthy and well-connected.

Almazbek Atambayev made a calculated bid for long-lasting power in Kyrgyzstan two years ago but now instead stands charged, the BBC reported Tuesday, with murder, planning a coup, fomenting unrest, and taking hostages.

As Kyrgyzstan's Parliament voted to strip former president Almazbek Atambayev’s immunity, he was busy barricading himself in his house, threatening to shoot at police if they came to take him away.

A former key member of ex Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambaev’s administration was arrested Sunday and is being detained, the latest Atambaev aide suspected of corruption while in office.

Kyrgyz authorities removed on Friday the head of the institution charged with issuing passports, a day after reporters published an investigation into a fraudulent tender procedure that saw a Lithuanian company winning the bid although not meeting tender requirements.  

Kyrgyzstan’s security services are investigating current and former government officials for accepting bribes from a Lithuanian company that won a tender to supply biometric passport booklets. Reporters for Kloop and OCCRP found what was wrong with the tender procedure.

The President of Kyrgyzstan called on the country’s corrupted, dysfunctional judicial and national security agencies to launch a merciless fight against graft, saying the problem is already threatening national security, the Times of Central Asia reported on Sunday.

A court in Bishkek found the head of a Kyrgyz opposition party and his co-defendant guilty of corruption and sentenced them to eight years in prison each, RFE/RL reported Wednesday.

Kyrgyz law enforcement officers arrested a criminal gang suspected of murder, robbery, vehicle theft and other crimes, Kyrgyz Interior Ministry’s press service reported Monday.

The head of an Kyrgyz opposition party and an ex-minister went on trial Monday for allegedly receiving US$ one million from a Russian businessman for helping him buy a Kyrgyz mobile operator.

Kyrgyzstan authorities charged a pro-government lawmaker for illegally transferring agricultural land into private hands and pocketing the money while acting as a regional governor, authorities told OCCRP on Tuesday.