Abramovich’s $1 Billion Art Collection. Despite Sanctions, It Has Not Been Seized or Frozen

Experts say it’s one of the most impressive private art collections in the world. Made up of over 300 pieces — including works by Picasso, Monet, and Degas — it was valued in 2018 at nearly $1 billion. This striking assortment was acquired over the years by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and his ex-wife Dasha Zhukova, corporate documents newly leaked from Cyprus reveal.

Uber broke laws, duped police and secretly lobbied governments

The leak also contains texts between Kalanick and Emmanuel Macron, who secretly helped the company in France when he was economy minister, allowing Uber frequent and direct access to him and his staff.

Mysterious Group of Companies Tied to Bank Rossiya Unites Billions of Dollars in Assets Connected to Vladimir Putin

Lawyers for Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich argue he should not be sanctioned because his ties to the Kremlin are weak, but new documents reveal he secretly had a years-long partnership with the Russian government in a forestry venture.

The Russian president, who cultivates a public image of abstemious patriotism, has been linked to a number of luxurious properties, including a vast palace on the Black Sea, acres of surrounding vineyards, a ski resort, and a villa north of St. Petersburg.

“It looks very compelling that Whyte has been acting as a proxy for Kostin,” said Tamara Makarenko, a veteran of the business intelligence sector extensive experience investigating oligarchs.

The family of Tatyana Golikova, the Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation for Social Policy, owns assets worth around $830 million, as Alexei Navalny’s team of investigators discovered. The list of real estate objects owned by the deputy prime minister’s family (Golikova herself, her husband Viktor Khristenko, and her stepson Vladimir Khristenko) features a house near Moscow with a floor area of 1,800 square meters, five villas in Europe, and several golf clubs. The investigators insist that she “earned” all this wealth by making vaccines for the national immunization campaign.

in Kyiv, a company called Milton Group threw a glitzy New Year’s party for its staff. To the strains of a pop-rock cover band, contortionists and fire-dancers whirled under neon lights as young salespeople revelled in the spoils of a record-breaking year selling investments in cryptocurrencies and stocks. The firm’s management distributed cash, cars, and other prizes. One star salesman got a free apartment for a year. But the real business of Milton Group was fraud. And even as its young employees partied in Kyiv, their victims across the world were losing their homes and assets.

A project to track down and catalogue the vast wealth held outside Russia by oligarchs and key figures close to Russian President

Early in his presidency, Putin earned praise for bringing to heel the tycoons who had plundered Russia’s economy in the 1990s. Some signaled their loyalty to him, securing their wealth and their place in the new order. 

How a network of enablers have helped Russia’s oligarchs hide their wealth abroad

close to 20% of the country’s wealth is stashed in offshore jurisdictions like Cyprus, the Seychelles, the British Virgin Islands — even the United States.

Total has known that burning fossil fuels was causing climate change since the 1970s

The oil giant knew their core business was causing global warming almost 50 years ago. They covered up the truth, funded misinformation, lied to their shareholders and the public. They made profit from pollution.

The Pandora Papers

Millions of leaked documents and the biggest journalism partnership in history have uncovered financial secrets of 35 current and former world leaders, more than 330 politicians and public officials in 91 countries and territories, and a global lineup of fugitives, con artists and murderers.

Easy to realise who are the most corrupt and poorest countries

On the decline since Panama Papers, Malta punished for dirty money reputation

The Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental body that investigates, and makes recommendations for anti-money laundering initiatives, added Malta, along with Haiti, the Philippines and South Sudan to its list of countries deemed to have insufficient protections against dirty money. These four countries joined 19 other jurisdictions on the watchdog’s grey list, which includes Syria, Myanmar and Panama.

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The inclusion of Malta on the list as a jurisdiction “under increased monitoring” will likely make it harder for the small country to attract international banking and investment. 

Collective – shocking exposé of needless deaths in Romania

The cynicism and indifference to suffering is truly horrible, and a kind of insidious evil rises from the screen like carbon monoxide, and also a terrible sadness. There is a moment ... when Tolontan and his colleagues are shown a secretly filmed video of maggots wriggling in a patient’s incompetently dressed wound. If that was in a fictional film, the metaphor would be dismissed as too obvious. Finally, Tolontan and his team are shown discussing sinister communications they have had from the intelligence services, telling them to be careful, for their families’ sake.

Microsoft removed 'Tank Man' images on Tiananmen Square's anniversary

Microsoft blocked images and videos around the world of "Tank Man," the unidentified protester during China's brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

The infiltration and undermining of Europe's economy and society by organised crime

The SOCTA 2021 provides an overview of the current state of knowledge on criminal networks and their operations based on data provided to Europol by Member States and partners and data collected specifically for the SOCTA 2021. In trying to overcome the established, and limiting, conceptualisation of organised crime groups, this assessment focuses on the roles of criminals within criminal processes and outlines how a better understanding of those roles allows for a more targeted operational approach in the fight against serious and organised crime.

With a stalemate in Minsk, the next chapter of Belarusian history may be written in the Kremlin

Criminal charges, kidnappings, bags over the head and death threats: the Belarusian leader has deployed all the resources of his repressive apparatus this week in an attempt to suffocate the growing protest movement against his continued rule as he prepares for a crucial meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Ex-cop’s video captures crowd’s horror during Floyd arrest

The video made available Thursday comes from fired Officer Tou Thao, one of four former Minneapolis police officers charged in the death of Floyd, a handcuffed Black man. Floyd died after a white officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes on a south Minneapolis street May 25 as Floyd repeatedly said he could not breathe.

Chocolate: Child Labour and Deforestation

In 2001, the lucrative chocolate industry, due to pressure from NGOs, committed itself to putting an end to child labour in cacao plantations before 2006. 18 years later, has that promise been kept? The Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cacao producer, made a real effort to eradicate this scourge on the country. They built schools and trained farmers. Television adverts even reminded populations that child labour is illegal. So why does child exploitation still exist?

In the past half-century, few countries have lost rainforests as fast as the Ivory Coast. More than 80 percent of its forests are gone, most following an illegal invasion by as many as a million landless people into national parks and other supposedly protected forests. The Marahoue National Park alone has 30,000 illegal inhabitants. The invaders are growing cocoa to supply the global chocolate business.

The UN failed to hold the Saudi and Emirati led coalition to account for killing and injuring at least 222 children, and at least 4 incidents of attacks on schools and hospitals verified by the UN in 2019

In a shocking decision, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has removed Saudi Arabia from his annual ‘list of shame’. This shows powerful parties can kill and maim children or attack schools and hospitals with impunity

How it is possible?!

Videos of children showing their exposed buttocks, underwear and genitals are racking up millions of views on YouTube – with the site displaying advertising from major cosmetics and car brands alongside the content.

Seven EU Countries Labeled ‘Tax Havens’ in Parliament Report

The MEPs found that seven of the EU’s 28 member states — Belgium, Cyprus, Hungary, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and The Netherlands — “display traits of a tax haven and facilitate aggressive tax planning.”

Following increased pressure by the Finnish Government for Portugal to ratify the revised treaty between the two countries, on April 30, 2018 the Finnish Parliament voted in favor of denouncing the Portugal-Finland tax treaty signed on April 27, 1970 (the Old Treaty). As a result the Old Treaty will be terminated effective as of January 1, 2019, in accordance with article 30.º of that treaty. If Portugal does not ratify the revised treaty by December 1, 2018, Finnish domestic legislation will apply, and private sector pensions sourced in Finland and paid to Portuguese residents will be subject to tax in Finland from January 1, 2019.

Dutch bank stocks, Austria's Raiffeisen fall on money laundering report

Shares in two Dutch banks and Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) fell on Tuesday after media reports about a money laundering network alleged to have channeled billions of euros from Russia.

Governments are concerned that cryptocurrencies can undermine anti-money-laundering and sanctions-enforcement regimes

Drug trafficking organizations operating as far apart as Colombia and China, and even blacklisted nations such as North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran, have made headlines for their clandestine crypto maneuvers.