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A HUGE hat tip to the investigative journalists over the intensive and dedicated work on exposing tax evaders and money laundering across the globe.The Big Picture: Real estate in some of the world’s most coveted neighborhoods is owned by anonymous companies registered in notoriously secretive jurisdictions, like the British Virgin Islands (BVI).
Behind many of these offshore firms are political elites — including heads of state — who are often trying to avoid taxes or, in some cases, launder money.
?? Dictator’s Family in London: Family and close associates of Azerbaijan’s president — including his teenage children — secretly purchased $700 million worth of London real estate. Read more.
?? Czech PM in France: Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš set up a British Virgin Islands company in 2009 that secretly loaned €15 million to other shell companies he owned in the U.S. and Monaco. The money was eventually used to buy luxury French real estate. Read More.
?? Zelensky’s Offshore Network: Comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, who won Ukraine’s presidency on an anti-corruption platform, was co-owner of an offshore network. Even now, his family appears to still be able to profit from one of the companies. Read More.
?? Russian Money in Croatia: The family of a wealthy Croatian tycoon with ties to Vladimir Putin secretly took over a real estate developer. The family then funnelled suspicious funds from a Russian pipeline company to this real estate firm, using an opaque trust. Read More.
?? Kazakh Oligarchs and a ‘Tokal’: Two oligarchs are linked to $30 million worth of transfers to the alleged unofficial third wife (or tokal) of Kazakhstan’s former president, who remains arguably the most powerful man in the country. Read More.
?? Serbian PEP’s Properties: When our Serbian colleagues reported that Siniša Mali, then the mayor of Belgrade, had bought 24 properties on Bulgaria’s coast, he denied the allegations and offered a challenge: “If you determine I’m the owner of these apartments, they’re all yours…”
Well, the Pandora Papers prove he is the properties’ owner, without a shadow of doubt. We’re still waiting for the keys. Read More.
OCCRP was one of 150 media outlets to investigate leaked documents from 14 service providers. Here are some highlights from our colleagues outside of the OCCRP network.
?? Tony Blair’s Taxes: Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife saved hundreds of thousands of pounds in property taxes when acquiring a London office building from an offshore company. Read more in the Guardian.
?? Kenyan Dynasty: The family of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta secretly owned a web of offshore companies in Panama and the BVI. Read more in Finance Uncovered.
?? Pakistan PM’s Inner Circle: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has surrounded himself with people who have secret holdings hidden offshore. Read more in ICIJ.
?? King of Jordan in the U.S. and U.K.: Jordan’s long-ruling monarch King Abdullah II has secretly owned 14 luxury homes in the U.K and the U.S., which he purchased through front companies registered in notorious tax havens. Read more in ICIJ.
? Latin American PEPs: One of Central America’s most prestigious law firms, Alcogal, set up offshore companies for 160 politicians and public officials — including some accused of looting their own countries. Read more at ICIJ.
IMPACT & RESPONSES
?? Pakistan: Prime Minister Khan welcomed the Pandora Papers in a tweet, vowing to investigate citizens named in the investigation.
?? Czech Republic: The Czech national police announced they will “act upon” the Pandora Papers’ revelations into the prime minister, who is up for reelection this week.
The U.S. government has long condemned prominent offshore financial centers, where liberal rules and guarantees of discretion have drawn oligarchs, business tycoons and politicians.
But a burgeoning American trust industry is increasingly sheltering the assets of international millionaires and billionaires by promising levels of protection and secrecy that rival or surpass those offered in overseas tax havens. That shield, which is near-absolute, has insulated the industry from meaningful oversight and allowed it to forge new footholds in U.S. states.
Explore the latest stories in our groundbreaking Pandora Papers investigation:
Throat slit and dozens of stab wounds. This happened at a weeek ago…great job media. No suspects yet? No worries, French investigators say this may be politically motivated….really?
Imran Aliev is dead.
The murder of an unidentified man at the Hôtel Coq Hardi near Lille train station was first reported on 30 January by La Voix du Nord, a local newspaper. According to the paper, the body of the man was found in his room by the cleaning staff after he failed to check out of his room. The body bore multiple stab wounds to the neck and a knife, the suspected murder weapon, was also found in the room.
Chechens living in exile who have fought or spoken out against Kadyrov – the ruthless Chechen leader appointed by Vladimir Putin – have often been targeted for assassination. Last year, a former Chechen rebel commander was shot twice in the head in a targeted killing in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten. The suspected assassin is Russian.
Imran Aliev, who settled in Belgium after leaving Chechnya, was described as an eccentric and divisive figure who often published YouTube videos critical of the Chechen government under the pseudonym Mansur Stariy, or Old Mansur. He had also sparked conflicts by targeting natives of Ingushetia and Dagestan, regions that neighbour Chechnya, in profanity-laced tirades that had earned threats on his life.
Those who knew Aliev expressed surprise that he had been targeted because he was seen as a marginal figure suffering from debilitating health issues.
“He was murdered especially cruelly,” wrote Musa Taipov, a Chechen opposition journalist based in Strasbourg who said he was in regular contact with Aliev. In a Facebook post, Taipov described Aliev as a “difficult but honest” acquaintance who was managing a difficult illness with painkillers and would sometimes issue “not entirely proper declarations”.
“Some people, they offended. For others, they were ‘funny’,” Taipov wrote. He sometimes urged Aliev to delete the YouTube videos, Taipov said, and “most of the time he agreed”.
Police have not publicly identified any suspects in the case. A lawyer who knew Aliev told the Caucasian Knot website that the blogger had received a visitor from Chechnya several days before his death. The man had asked for Aliev’s help with a health condition and the two travelled from Belgium to Lille together, where Aliev was last seen alive. The man then disappeared. Minkail Malizaev, a Chechen blogger who left Grozny under pressure and now lives in Germany, also claimed in an online post that the man visiting Aliev had also sought a meeting with him.
Thousands of refugees and emigres from Chechnya live in Europe. Many fled the two wars that devastated the region from the 1990s, while others escaped the brutal crackdown against dissent under Kadyrov, who has headed the region since 2007 and runs it as a near-fiefdom. Aliev had political asylum in Belgium, the lawyer said.
The trail of assassinations of prominent Chechens in Europe and the Middle East stretches back more than a decade, and includes former rebel commanders and government critics. Increasingly, the attacks have targeted people who posed no real political danger to Kadyrov, but merely took to Instagram or YouTube accounts to voice their dissatisfaction with Chechnya’s leaders in Grozny.
“I have no doubt that [Aliev] was on a list of people who have been sentenced to death,” said Tumso Abdurakhmanov, a video blogger living in Europe who has received threats from allies of Kadyrov for his criticism on YouTube of Chechnya’s government.
Abdurakhmanov claimed that before Aliev’s murder, he had received information that a hitman from Chechnya had been dispatched to western Europe, and shared the details of the man’s itinerary with German police. Abdurakhmanov said he initially believed that the hitman was targeting him. He declined to reveal the source of that information. More here from The Guardian.
Trump accused Germany of being “totally controlled” by Russia in comments about their proposed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel replied that she’d already “experienced the Soviet occupation … it is good that we are independent today.”
Trump called on NATO members to double their defense spending commitment to 4%. (The U.S. is at 3.5%). Only five nations (if you include Poland at 1.99%) currently meet the 2% target for 2024.
Axios’ Jonathan Swan asked NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg a pair of questions in Brussels.
Swan 1: Did President Trump assure you he wouldn’t make any concessions in his meeting with Vladimir Putin — for example on Crimea?
Stoltenberg 1: “Action speaks louder than words. And I’m absolutely confident about the U.S. commitment to European security.” Stoltenberg noted that all allies, including the U.S., signed a declaration today saying they don’t recognize Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. (But he dodged the question about what assurances he sought and received.)
Swan 2: Has President Trump, in any of his conversations with you, suggested he thinks the United States has too many troops in Europe?
Stoltenberg 2: “This is the unified position of all allies… The illegal annexation of Crimea is one of the main reasons why NATO has implemented the biggest reinforcement of collective defense since the end of the Cold War.” (Again, separating Trump’s words from the Trump administration’s deeds.)
Swan’s thought bubble: Stoltenberg has a point about Trump’s words versus his administration’s deeds (so far). Trump has not done anything to reduce U.S. military support for NATO and has actually increased military investments in Europe.
But at the same time Trump has done what no recent U.S. president has done — publicly questioned the value of NATO for the U.S. and in the process made some of America’s closest allies privately question whether they can still rely on American protection.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron jokes with President Trump. Photo by Tatyana Zenkovich/AFP/Getty Images.
So, what about NATO?
Former defense minister of Georgia stands to ask if NATO regrets not giving full them membership, because “it was seen as an invitation for Russia” to invade. And asks when will there be appetite for NATO expansion. Germany’s Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen: “I have been to a lot of NATO meetings… this summit has the most substance that I have seen”
President Trump asserts that Germany is ‘captive to Russia’ over pipeline project in testy exchange with NATO chief. That was at the breakfast meeting.
Then is Europe threatened by Russia, hence the reason for NATO? Yes, an example –>
A group of Russian special operations forces parachuted onto the island of Gogland in a Russian-controlled portion of the Gulf of Finland. They hid their parachutes, journeyed deep into the interior, and destroyed a series of mock communications stations, radars and ASM batteries. They then prepped a landing site for a helicopter escape — despite the fact that the island already has a helipad.
The troops jumped from a Mi-8AMTSH helicopter at an altitude of 2,500 meters, and used satellite navigation equipment to guide them to their landing site, notes a July 10 press release on the drill from the Russian Ministry of Defense. The soldiers that took part in the exercise had “not less than a hundred jumps with parachutes of various types,” it said.
Aki Heikkinen, who curates Russianmilitarywatch.com, pointed out that Gogland, seized by Russia in 1944, is just 24 miles from the Finnish city of Kotka. More here.
So, as these encounters went on today at the NATO Summit, Trump went so far as to suggest 4% of GDP payments to NATO members.
Meanwhile: NATO existed below the creation of the European Union, and…
President Trump has consistently railed against other members of the NATO security alliance for freeloading off the United States and not doing enough to manage their own defense.
“NATO has not treated us fairly,” he told reporters before leaving for a NATO summit meeting this week in Brussels. “We pay far too much and they pay far too little.”
As with many Trump crusades, there’s truth to his claims—but more to the story. Trump will press for more European defense spending at this week’s meeting, which is likely to be contentious. Other NATO members are already pushing back, arguing that their commitment to defense is rising and they back US priorities in other important ways. But the basic numbers support Trump.
The United States has been the biggest contributor to NATO since Western nations founded the alliance in 1949 to help prevent any more world wars and shield Europe from the Soviet Union. Underpayments by European nations have been contentious since long before Trump started complaining about the problem–especially following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when many nations began to slash defense spending.
In 2014, NATO agreed that each member country should spend a minimum of 2% of GDP on defense within a decade. So far, only five countries meet that threshold: the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece, Estonia and Latvia. The United States spends 3.5% of GDP on defense, the most of any NATO member. Among other big NATO members, France spends 1.8% of GDP on defense, Germany 1.2%, Italy 1.2%, and Spain 0.9%.
NATO has 29 member countries. Here’s how they measure up:
Graphic by David Foster
NATO said earlier this year that eight members will meet the 2% threshold in 2018, with Poland, Romania, and Lithuania joining the club. The alliance also said 15 nations would hit the target by 2024, though it hasn’t identified the other seven. That would still leave 14 members falling short of NATO’s own spending target. And that’s if there’s no recession by then, which could force governments to cut spending, not raise it, as tax revenue declines.
European leaders seem to realize they have a weak argument when Trump blasts them for subpar defense spending. Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, argued in a statement prior to Trump’s visit that Europe spends more on defense than China and Russia, and he urged Trump to “appreciate your allies.” But he also acknowledged that Trump is right on spending, saying “dear Europe, spend more on your defence, because everyone respects an ally that is well-prepared and equipped.”
While Trump is right about the spending numbers, some analysts worry he’s overly fixated on one metric that doesn’t fully capture the way various NATO members contribute to real-world security operations. Also important, for instance, are troop and equipment contributions to NATO missions. By those metrics, some of the deadbeat members look much more involved.
NATO members other than the United States have taken on steadily more of the NATO mission in Afghanistan since the US first invaded in 2001, for instance. Seven nations—the Czech Republic, Romania, Montenegro, Albania, Denmark, Croatia and Germany—contributed more troops to Afghanistan operations, as a percentage of their total military force, than the United States did between 2015 and 2017, according to analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
By the same metric, nine NATO members, led by Canada, Norway and Denmark, contributed a larger portion of their military force to operations against ISIS than the US did in 2016. And the US ranks 18th in refugees taken in due to Mideast instability as a percentage of total population, with Turkey, Sweden and Norway accepting the most.
Tower: Two Iranian nationals, recently arrested by France and Germany, will be extradited to Belgium in connection to a terror plot that targeted an Iranian opposition rally outside of Paris, Reuters reported Wednesday.
The rally, which took place Saturday, was held by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an Iranian opposition group. Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s lawyer, spoke at the rally calling for the removal of the regime’s rulers.
On Saturday, Belgian authorities arrested an Iranian couple who had 500 grams of a homemade explosive and a detonator in their car.
France has arrested a man of Iranian origin and Germany had arrested an Austria-based Iranian diplomat. According to Reuters, Belgium asked France and Germany to extradite their suspects. A European intelligence source told Reuters that Belgium was taking the lead in the investigation.
On Wednesday, Iran’s foreign ministry summoned the ambassadors of France, Germany, and Belgium to protest the arrest of the Iranian diplomat. Earlier in the day, Iran had also protested to France over allowing the NCRI meeting to take place on French soil. Iran considers the group to be a terrorist group.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi dismissed the European claims about a terror plot, saying that the arrest was part of a plot by the United States and Israel to damage European-Iranian relations. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif similarly referred to the charges as a “sinister false flag ploy.”
Iran has been accused in the paste of planning terror attacks, especially targeting opponents of the regime, on European soil. In November of last year, an advocate for Iranian-Arabs was fatally shot in the Hague. In 2012, an al Qaeda terrorist testified in court that Iran facilitated the travel of him and his accomplices to carry out terror attacks in Europe.
In one of the most notorious of these cases, Iranian agents entered a Berlins restaurant and killed three Kurdish activists and wounded several others in a hail of gunfire. The conviction of the assassins, who were tied to the regime, led to a rupture in relations between Germany and Iran.
*** Deeper dive:
An Iranian diplomat and members of what authorities described as an “Iranian sleeper cell” were arrested this week in Belgium, Germany and France, as they were allegedly planning to a bomb a high-level meeting in Paris. The arrests came after a complex investigation by several European intelligence agencies and were announced by Belgium’s Minister of the Interior, Jan Jambon.
The operation against the alleged sleeper cell began on Saturday, June 30, when members of Belgium’s Special Forces Group, stopped a Mercedes car in Brussels. The car was carrying a married Belgian couple of Iranian descent, named in media reports as Amir S., 38, and Nasimeh N., 33. According to the Belgian Ministry of the Interior, Nasimeh N. was found to be carrying 500 grams of triacetone triperoxide (TATP) explosive and a detonator inside a toiletries bag. On the following day, Sunday, July 1, German police arrested Assadollah A., an Iranian diplomat stationed in Iran’s embassy in Vienna, Austria. According to reports, the diplomat was driving a rental car in the southeastern German state of Bavaria, heading to Austria. On the same day, a fourth person, who has not been named, was arrested by authorities in France, reportedly in connection to the other three arrests.
The four detainees were in contact with each other and were allegedly working for the Iranian government. All four have been charged with an alleged foiled plot to bomb the annual conference of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) that took place last Saturday, June 30, in a Paris suburb. The National Council of Resistance of Iran is a France-based umbrella group of Iranian dissidents, led by Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a militant group that has roots in radical Islam and Marxism. Between 1970 and 1976, the group assassinated six American officials in Iran and in 1970 tried to kill the United States ambassador to the country. It initially supported the Islamic Revolution of 1979, but later withdrew its support, accusing the government of Ayatollah Khomeini of “fascism”. It continued its operations from exile, mainly from Iraq, where its armed members were trained by the Palestine Liberation Organization and other Arab leftist groups.
Until 2009, the European Union and the United States officially considered the MEK a terrorist organization. But the group’s sworn hatred of the government in Iran brought it close to Washington after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. By 2006, the US military was openly collaborating with MEK forces in Iraq, and in 2012 the group was dropped from the US Department of State’s foreign terrorist organizations. Today the group enjoys open protection from the EU and the US. According to Belgian authorities, the four members of the Iranian sleeper cell were planning to bomb the MEK-sponsored NCRI meeting in Paris under instructions by the Iranian government. Conference participants included over 30 senior US officials, including US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who addressed the meeting. Stephen Harper, Canada’s former prime minister, also spoke at the conference.
Speaking in Brussels this week, Belgium’s Interior Minister Jambon praised the country’s intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies for foiling the alleged bomb plot in Paris. But Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, dismissed claims of an Iranian sleeper cell as “fake news” and described reports of a foiled bomb attack as “a sinister false flag plot”.
Those that take heed and prepare are left to help a country survive. Sweden is a member of the European Union. Question is what is the EU Headquarters in Brussels response to this? So far, silence.
It is all due to Russia, Crimea and Ukraine especially Kaliningrad. Roughly 220 miles of ocean separates Sweden from the heavily militarized Russian port of Kaliningrad. The country’s long, narrow shape leaves it vulnerable to air assault from multiple sides. And Sweden, along with neighboring Finland, are in the unique position as the only non-NATO aligned nations on the Baltic Sea.
Hence, the nation spent the Cold War years preparing to fend for itself against a great power invasion, drawing up plans for how to mobilize the entirety of the civilian population and infrastructure to defend its territory. And then the Soviet Union collapsed, a new era of peace dawned and those plans were left to fall fallow.
Sweden has not gone to war with another country for over two centuries, but that hasn’t stopped the government from reissuing an emergency manual from World War II that advises citizens on how best to cope with hypothetical hostilities.
The newly updated 20-page pamphlet, entitled Om krisen eller kriget kommer (‘If crisis or war comes”), offers strategies for handling everything from cyber attacks and terrorism to climate change, food shortages and fake news.
“What would you do if your everyday life was turned upside down?” the English language version of the manual begins.
Since supplies could run low during a crisis, the leaflet provides checklists of what to stock up on, including mineral water, wet wipes and tinned hummus. It also offers tips on where to find bomb shelters, what to do without access to ATMs, cellphones or the internet, and how to spot propaganda.
“Although Sweden is safer than many other countries, there are still threats to our security and independence,” the brochure says. “If you are prepared, you are contributing to improving the ability of the country as a whole to cope with a major strain.”
The illustrated instructions went online Monday and are being sent to all 4.8 million households in the country in the first such public awareness campaign since 1961. The handbook was last updated for government officials’ use during the Cold War, according to the Guardian.
The newly minted pamphlets do not specify an attacker, but their release comes amid escalating security concerns following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Sweden has accused Moscow of repeatedly infringing on its airspace and territorial waters — claims the Kremlin dismisses as “Russiaphobia.”
Sweden began increasing its military spending in 2016, reversing years of cuts. It also reinstated the military draft last year, citing Russian assertiveness as one of the justifications, and is considering joining NATO.
In the event of a “heightened state of alert,” the pamphlet emphasizes the expectation that everyone can be marshaled for Sweden’s “total defense.”
“If Sweden is attacked by another country, we will never give up,” the publication reads. “All information to the effect that resistance is to cease is false.”
***
Similar leaflets were first distributed in neutral Sweden in 1943, at the height of the second world war. Updates were issued regularly to the general public until 1961, and then to local and national government officials until 1991.
“Society is vulnerable, so we need to prepare ourselves as individuals,” said Dan Eliasson of the Swedish civil contingencies agency, which is in charge of the project. “There’s also an information deficit in terms of concrete advice, which we aim to provide.”
France’s President Emmanuel Macron jokes with President Trump. Photo by Tatyana Zenkovich/AFP/Getty Images.
