Supported projects

KATUNITSA - Some 10 to 12 million Roma are estimated to travel around Europe. The political dimension of this ethnical and social challenge is an ongoing discussion in the EU, but what is never told is the dark economy of Roma migration. Who benefits from the large afflux of mainly poor people into western Europe?

BUCHAREST - Dodgy dealers in Romanian nationality can conjure up genuine documents for fake applicants, and with it the right to work within the EU.

ANTWERP - It’s the latest fashion in maternity hospitals. Mothers throughout the EU are encouraged to privately bank the cord blood of their newborn babies. But private cord blood banks are not free from criticism. On the contrary.

LJUBLJANA - From 1991 until 1995, the Yugoslav Wars wreaked havoc on the Balkans. War crimes of all sorts and flavours struck the region with such fierceness and frequency that by the end of the 20th century Yugoslavia had been torn apart. One of the crimes committed was the illegal trade of arms by government officials of the countries involved, acts with which they infringed the UN arms embargo.

PRISTINA - Up until nine years after the Kosovo War, from 1999 to 2008, Kosovo was ran by UNMIK (United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo).

VARNA - Property corruption in Bulgaria is a minefield in which criminals and terrorists can hide their money while investors lose their life savings.

RIGA - Hundreds of women come to Ireland each year to marry non-Europeans – with the sole aim of securing visas for their new husbands. Most of them are from poor Eastern European states such as Latvia and Lithuania, where the offer of a few thousand euros is enough to lure women into such a “sham marriage”.

KIEV - For more than 40 years Tatyana Jablonskaya's name and signature have been the pride of soviet realism's paintings. Her masterpieces, vibrant, popular scenes of a dream life in the USSR, illustrated communist propaganda appearing everywhere from reproductions in schoolbooks and political booklets to exhibitions in art museums all across the USSR. But now increasingly, original paintings of Jablonskaya's are disappearing, ever more forged versions taking their place.

TALLINN - According to experts, Estonian financial institutions are popular among criminals for laundering money because Estonia offers cheaper currency transactions than Russia and less regulation than in the EU. Its convenient location for such transactions adds to the appeal.

BUCHAREST - 'The New Slave Trade in the Heart of Europe': poor people are being lured from Eastern Europe to the Czech Republic for forced labour. Some of the worst gangsters are now on trial but there is no sign of this evil trade coming to an end.