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Property scam Eastern European style revealed

BRUSSELS – 10 / 8 / 2010 - Rich Estonians who invested in the real estate of the Black Sea seaside resort in Varna, Bulgaria, with hopes of fat profits, were scammed by the local Chechen criminal gang, according to story supported by Journalismfund.eu.

By Brigitte Alfter

“Three-four years ago life in Estonia was beautiful – the economy was expanding and the real estate boom promised bigger riches. Free funds were itching in Estonians’ pockets,” writes Piret Reiljan in her article about Estonian investors being trapped by Chechen gangs. Tourist palaces and other property in the Bulgarian Black Sea resort of Varna were at the centre of a property scam involving Estonia, Bulgaria and Northern Caucasus republics.

This is the second and last series of stories Reiljan did using her grant of Journalismfund.eu and in cooperation with Bulgarian colleagues.

In 2009 Piret Reiljan and her colleague Koit Brinkmann from Estonian business daily Äripäev in Tallinn had heard rumours about a large money laundering scheme in Estonia and several other countries. In order to pursue their idea in spite of problems with different languages and business legislations in different countries they turned to Journalismfund.eu and received a grant of €2550.

When they started to investigate they initially found over illegal party funding and their articles caused a change of the law. The next articles in the series unveiled a pyramid-style funding scheme with consequences for the Estonian company involved.

The current articles about " Estonians trapped by the Chechens (pdf, 1.2 MB)" is the last in the series supported by Journalismfund.eu. Read about the previous articles and the cooperation with the Bulgarian colleagues.


Piret Reiljan, piret.reiljan@aripaev.ee, +3726670249 (Estonian, English)
Born 1983 Piret Reiljan took up working as a journalist at a local newspaper in the summer of 2004 while she was still studying at Tartu University. Since 2006 she has been employed at business daily Äripëv, initially as a news reporter, since 2007 as an investigative reporter. She authored or co-authored the best Äripäev story of the year in 2007 and 2008 and won the Best Estonian Young Journalist Award by the Estonian Newspaper Associaton in 2007. For her work in 2009 Piret Reiljan won Estonia's oldest and most prestigious journalism prize, the Bonnier Award, given to the best investigative story of the year. Her stories revealed Swedbank's conflict of interests, when the bank invested its pension funds' clients' money into bonds of enterprises that were getting loans from Swedbank itself. After the stories ran in Äripäev, Swedbank was forced by the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority to compensate its pension fund clients EUR 10 million euros. The scandal has been credited as one of the reasons the head of Swedbank Robur, the bank's investment branch, left the company.