Supported projects

BERLIN - "They described men arriving in Berlin with briefcases full of cash, wanting to buy land, buildings, restaurants". Bernd Finger, former chief investigator of the BKA in Berlin told us regarding statements he received from the Treuhandgesellschaft (the DDR trust company), during the nineties. "Everything was legal at the time, nobody could have known or suspected that this money was there to be laundered”.

In October 2016, the authoritarian president of Tajikistan, Emomali Rachmon, pushed a pile of stones into the river Vachsh with a bulldozer. With this symbolic gesture he gave a new start to the construction of the Rogun dam which started in 1976. With 335 meters, Rogun has to become the highest dam in the world and the largest hydroelectric power plant in Central Asia. Quite a strong achievement for the poorest country in the region.

BUDAPEST - In our project, we’ve discovered how businessmen related to the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán were buying up media outlets in Slovenia. 

Banks and vulture funds make money from ordinary people’s distress. The only way to fight back is to outsmart them. Wall Street giants—the so-called ‘vulture funds’—have been on a house-buying spree across Europe and the United States since the 2008 financial crash.

Thousands of refugees from Africa and the Middle East risk their lives to reach the shores of Europe and escape conflict and repression.  But for the wealthy there are easier options available. With enough money, it's possible to purchase a EU passport - or at least residence. 

VALLETTA - The Mediterranean republic of Malta operates a tax system where companies pay the lowest tax on profits in the EU - only five per cent. Over the last three months, journalistic network European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) dug into over 150,000 documents that show how international companies take advantage of this system, using Malta as a pirate base for tax avoidance in the EU.

How Russian Billionaire and Fashion TV investor paid near zero-tax on small loans operations in Europe and USA.

Massimo Carminati, boss of an alleged mafia group in Rome, is said to have made millions of euros before his arrest in December 2014. But this financial treasure is nowhere to be found.

The internal financial structures of several African countries' dominant political parties that are performing as corporatised multinationals in monopolised state power structures: Angola’s MPLA, Zimbabwe's ZANU, and Namibia’s SWAPO.