#ICIJ media

[mariacallous]

Journalists from 69 global media outlets working under the auspices of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the German publication Paper Trail Media have published a new investigation titled Cyprus Confidential. The reporting relies on 3.6 million leaked documents from six Cypriot companies described as “financial enablers.” Among other findings, the journalists uncovered that Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who has long denied having any connections with Vladimir Putin, sold a quarter of the shares of one of Russia’s largest advertising holdings to entrepreneurs close to the Russian president in 2010. Additionally, the project’s investigators determined that Hubert Seipel, a German journalist who has written multiple books praising Putin, received hundreds of thousands of euros from offshore accounts linked to Russian billionaire Alexey Mordashov. Meduza outlines some of the investigation’s key findings.

Reporting based on records from the leak

The auditing firm PwC Cyprus may have violated sanctions by continuing to work on transferring Russian oligarch Alexey Mordashov’s shares in a German travel company to his partner in the days after the E.U. named him in new sanctions. Leaked documents suggest PwC Cyprus also rushed to restructure assets owned by Russian billionaires Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov as U.K. sanctions loomed.

A prominent German journalist, Hubert Seipel, received at least €600,000 ($653,000) in undisclosed offshore payments from companies linked to Russian oligarch Alexey Mordashov (see above) to support two books seen as favorable to Putin. According to The Guardian, the revelations about Seipel will likely fuel further debate “over the role parts of [Germany’s] political and business elite played in helping to keep Putin in power.”

With the help of a Cypriot corporate services firm called MeritServus, Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev was able to move debt worth millions of dollars between his shell companies (remaining in control of the shares while keeping it effectively “off the books”) despite Western sanctions against him for his support of Russian proxy forces in eastern Ukraine. MeritServus and Malofeev’s Cypriot company likely violated sanctions in these loan deals.

Just before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich transferred control of his $1-billion art collection to his ex-wife, Dasha Zhukova. The switcharoo was likely to prevent Western officials from freezing or seizing the collection in case of sanctions against Abramovich, which the U.K. and E.U. imposed in March 2022 for his alleged association with Vladimir Putin. (Zhukova, a U.S. citizen, has not been sanctioned.)

Abramovich was also part of a secret $40-million deal in 2010 that used offshore shell companies to conceal his involvement in the transfer of shares in the profitable advertising company Video International to two close associates of Vladimir Putin known as his personal “wallets,” Sergey Roldugin and Alexander Plekhov. “The secret deal with Mr. Roldugin and Mr. Plekhov,” writes The BBC, “suggests a close financial relationship between Mr. Abramovich and President Putin” (which Abramovich denies).

Roman Abramovich sold his stake in an advertising firm to Putin’s friends

In September 2003, two Cypriot companies called Finoto Holdings and Grosora Holdings purchased 25 percent of the shares in Video International, a major Russian advertising holding company. At the time, according to the BBC, Video International “enjoyed a dominant position” in Russia’s domestic TV advertising market and was “half a step away” from the Kremlin.

Each of the companies paid just $130,000 for 12.5-percent stakes in Video International. According to journalists who analyzed newly leaked records, an entity called the Sara Trust Settlement owned both companies through a series of intermediaries — and its ultimate beneficiary was Roman Abramovich.

The following year, Abramovich received $1.8 million in dividends from the company — seven times what he had paid for the shares.

In December 2010, Finoto Holdings sold its share of another Cypriot company called Med Media Network, which nominally belonged to cellist Sergey Roldugin, a close friend of the Russian president who E.U. investigators who studied the Panama Papers in 2016 referred to a “Putin’s wallet.”

On the same day, Grosora Holdings sold its own stake in the company to Namiral Trading Ltd, a company with ties to Alexander Plekhov, an entrepreneur close to Rossiya Bank founder Yury Kovalchuk. The total value of the two sales amounted to $40 million.

According to the independent Russian outlet iStories, which took part in the ICIJ investigation, Abramovich’s role in the Video International deals was not previously known publicly. For years, observers assumed 100 percent of the company’s shares had been sold to entities associated with Yury Kovalchuk.

After the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Alexander Plekhov came under U.K. sanctions for his ties to Vladimir Putin, while Sergey Roldugin was sanctioned by the U.K., the E.U., and the U.S. Washington dubbed the musician “the custodian of President Putin’s offshore wealth.”

In the spring of 2023, the Swiss prosecutor’s office, which was investigating cases involving managers of Gazprombank’s Swiss affiliate, referred to Roldugin and Plekhov as “straw men” for Rossiya Bank, which the U.S. government has referred to as “Putin’s personal cashbox.”

Abramovich has long denied having any connections with Putin. In 2010, a representative of the billionaire stated that he had “no financial relationship” with Putin, who was prime minister at the time.

In 2021, Abramovich sued journalist and former Financial Times Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton over an excerpt from her book Putin’s People that said Abramovich had purchased Chelsea Football Club at Putin’s request. Abramovich won the case in a London court, and the book’s British publisher, HarperCollins, agreed to change the text and apologize to the businessman.

Abramovich did not respond to journalists’ questions regarding the Cyprus Confidential findings. Sergey Roldugin and Alexander Plekhov also declined to comment.

Generous payments to a top German ‘Russia expert’ for books about Putin

Another part of the investigation links Russian billionaire Alexey Mordashov to the German journalist Hubert Seipel, who has authored multiple complimentary books and films about Vladimir Putin.

In 2012, Seipel wrote and directed the film I, Putin: A Portrait, which was nominated for a German TV award for best documentary. In 2015 and 2021, he published the books Putin: The Logic of Power and Putin’s Power: Why Europe Needs Russia, both of which became bestsellers. Seipel has met with Putin multiple times and is considered one of Germany’s leading Russia experts. His public statements, meanwhile, often echo the Russian president’s own rhetoric.

The Cyprus leak reveals that in 2018, Seipel signed a “sponsorship agreement” for the creation and promotion of a book about the “political climate in Russia.” The deal ultimately led to the publication of Putin’s Power by the Hamburg-based publisher Hoffmann und Campe. According to the agreement, Seipel received at least 600,000 euros ($653,000). In addition, the document also contains a handwritten note that reads, “Similar to the 2013 agreement: biography of Putin.” This suggests the same sponsor paid Seipel for his earlier book on Putin.

The payment was made by a British Virgin Islands company called De Vere Worldwide Corporation, which is registered under the name of Igor Voskresensky, one of the directors of the Russian energy company Power Machines. The witness’s signature on the agreement belongs to Dmitry Fedotov, the head of the legal department of the steel company Severstal.

The funds for Seipel’s payments were issued to De Vere Worldwide from offshore accounts whose beneficiary was billionaire Alexey Mordashov, the owner of both Power Machines and Severstal. In 2018–2019, two of Mordashov’s offshore entities transferred a total of 610,000 euros ($664,000) to De Vere Worldwide.

In an interview with Paper Trail Media, Seipel admitted that Mordashov sponsored his books about Putin. However, he disputed that idea that this discredits the books themselves, saying the sponsorship agreements with De Vere Worldwide included a clause stating that he was under no obligation to his sponsor regarding the books’ contents. He also described Mordashov as an “entrepreneur who sponsors projects with private funds.”

Hoffmann und Campe said in a statement that it reserves the right to take legal action against Seipel for concealing the conflict of interest.

Alexey Mordashov, who Forbes lists as Russia’s fifth-richest billionaire, did not respond to journalists’ requests for comment.

[naturalrights-retard]

Welcome to New World Next Week – the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. This week:

Video player not working? Use these links to watch it somewhere else!

WATCH ON:  /  /  /  /  /  or DOWNLOAD THE MP4

Story #1: Why Is The CDC Now Treating COVID Like It’s The Flu? http://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/why-is-the-cdc-now-treating-covid-like-its-the-flu.html

CDC Shortens 5-Day COVID Isolation, Updates Guidance On Masks And Testing In New 2024 Recommendations https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-covid-recommendations-isolation-masks-tests/

Video: Local Experts React After CDC Drops 5-Day COVID-19 Isolation Guidelines https://youtu.be/ro1a5F9QxqU

Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched https://brownstone.org/articles/four-years-ago-this-week-freedom-was-torched/

Trump “Clearly Hasn’t Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes”, RFK Jr. Says https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-clearly-hasnt-learned-his-covid-era-mistakes-rfk-jr-says

Story #2: Boeing Whistleblower Found Dead Days After Testifying Against Aviation Giant https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13185019/Boeing-whistleblower-josh-barnett-dead-south-carolina.html

ICIJ: Boeing Whistleblower’s Journey From Pre-Crash Warnings, To Going Public In Their Wake https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2022/10/its-like-a-rollercoaster-boeing-whistleblowers-journey-from-pre-crash-warnings-to-going-public-in-their-wake

Ed Pierson: Former Boeing 737 Program Senior Manager Director, Foundation for Aviation Safety https://www.edpierson.com/

NWNW Flashback: The Mystery of Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (Mar. 13, 2014) https://mediamonarchy.com/nwnw185/

United Airlines Reports Fifth Incident In Over a Week As US-Bound Flight Returns To Australia https://nypost.com/2024/03/13/us-news/united-airlines-reports-fifth-incident-in-over-a-week-as-us-bound-flight-returns-to-australia/

Boeing Is In Big Trouble https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/12/investing/boeing-is-in-big-trouble/index.html

“Feels Like The Enemy Is Within” Boeing Airplanes, Says Pilot Who Flew For Air Force During Operation Desert Storm https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/12/feels-like-the-enemy-is-within-boeing-airplanes-says-pilot-who-flew-for-the-air-force-during-operation-desert-storm.html

Story #3: A Timeline of the Drama – and Conspiracy – Surrounding the Princess of Wales https://archive.is/Px9NH

Photo Agencies Refusing To Publish Portrait of Kate Middleton With Her Children Over Concerns It Was Manipulated https://businessinsider.com/kate-middleton-photo-fake-photo-agencies-kill-notification-2024-3

Kate Photo: Princess of Wales Seen After Saying She Edited Mother’s Day Picture https://bbc.com/news/uk-68534359

Forget the Occupants… FIVE Tires?!?😳 https://twitter.com/shargt/status/1764776893759258840

Kate’s Photo a Fake? https://old.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1bbmucv/kates_photo_a_fake/

What? Another Kate Middleton Post? Yea. This Edit Blew My Mind. https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/1bd49ol/what_another_kate_middleton_post_yea_this_edit/

Video: Evidence the Mother’s Day Photo Was Photoshopped https://www.tiktok.com/@allynaston/video/7344921409816251678

It’s clearly the same photo. They need to just do better, or just tell us what’s going on… https://twitter.com/mrliamwest/status/1767559938841231523

Prince William “Beside Himself” Over Kate Middleton’s Decision to Step Away From Royal Duties: Report https://radaronline.com/p/prince-williams-upset-kate-middleton-stepping-away-royal-duties/

Stephen Colbert Trolls Prince William’s Alleged Affair With Rose Hanbury Amid Kate Middleton Drama https://pagesix.com/2024/03/13/royal-family/stephen-colbert-trolls-prince-williams-alleged-affair-with-rose-hanbury/

Thomas Kingston: Remarkable Life of the ‘Relentlessly Optimistic’ Royal Found Dead at 45 https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/thomas-kingston-death-prince-william-kate-middleton-pippa-harry-b1142020.html

[cyberbenb]

Media: Ukrainian oligarch Akhmetov borrowed $400 million from Russian bank

Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov allegedly borrowed $400 million from Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, the International Consortium of Investigate Journalists (ICIJ) said on Nov. 14, citing inform Source : kyivindependent.com/media-ukr…

[head-post]

Why Russian billionaires need Cypriot financial firms

Cyprus has long been a haven for wealthy Russians seeking to obscure ownership of their businesses, superyachts and palatial homes, New York Folk reports.

Now an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and nearly 70 media organizations around the world, named Cyprus Confidential, shows how 67 of the 105 Russian billionaires on the 2023 Forbes World’s Billionaires List used financial services firms on the island to hide their wealth and keep it out of reach from Western sanctions.

The investigation relies on 3.6 million leaked documents from six Cypriot firms, dating mostly from the mid-1990s to April 2022 – two months after the war in Ukraine began, after which Western governments imposed sanctions on dozens of Russian billionaires. According to ICIJ, despite Cyprus’ status as a member of the European Union, the Cypriot firms continued to work with 25 Russians hit by Western sanctions after 2014. 

Another batch of leaked documents has revealed new information that Cypriot firms were deeply involved in a massive transfer of assets on behalf of Alexey Mordashov, a steel magnate and one of Russia’s richest people with an estimated $21 billion fortune. On 1 March 2022 – the day after EU sanctions were imposed on Mordashov – employees of PwC Cyprus, the local branch of audit giant PwC, and Cypcodirect, a firm founded by a former PwC Cyprus partner, helped transfer Mordashov’s stake in German travel company TUI Group to his wife Marina. The shares were worth $1.4bn at the time, and German authorities subsequently temporarily blocked the transfer itself.

Read more HERE

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Cyprus Confidential is a global investigation based on a leak of 3.6 million documents from six Cypriot firms involved in company registrations and consulting. It was conducted by 270 journalists from 69 media outlets led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Germany’s Paper Trail Media.

Vazhnye Istorii notes that Seipel’s two books about Putin, Putin: Inner Views of Power (2015) and Putin’s Power: Why Europe Needs Russia (2021), were published in several languages and became bestsellers, with tens of thousands of copies sold(..)

P.S. This is not the only such case! Only naive Westerners, who learn Russian history and politics from Kremlin propaganda books, can believe the fictional works of such "authors". Europe definitely does not need the Kremlin's criminal regime...

[gazeta24br]

Em sua oitava edição, o Festival Piauí de Jornalismo reúne jornalistas estrangeiros de diversos países, nos dias 2 e 3 de dezembro, na Cinemateca Brasileira, para debater o impacto das redes sociais e da inteligência artificial no jornalismo. Os ingressos para os debates estão à venda pelo site da Sympla. Com patrocínio do YouTube, o festival apresenta painéis de discussão com o tema “Desinformação, redes e inteligência artificial: na era da verdade sintética". Serão nove mesas instigantes, com as participações de sete jornalistas internacionais e moderação de figuras ilustres do jornalismo brasileiro, para explicar como a revolução digital, alimentada pela inteligência artificial, transformou o consumo de notícias. Os tópicos incluirão a regulamentação dos meios de comunicação digitais e a dinâmica das más notícias impulsionadas pelo engajamento. Para as conversas estão confirmados nomes como Ben Smith, cofundador e editor chefe do Semafor, ex-editor chefe do Buzzfeed News e ex-colunista de mídia do New York Times; Max Fisher, autor de “A máquina do caos: como as redes sociais reprogramaram nossa mente e nosso mundo”, ex-repórter do New York Times e colaborador do Crooked Media; e Marina Walker Guevara, editora-executiva do Pulitzer Center e ex-diretora do Consórcio Internacional de Jornalistas Investigativos (ICIJ), onde coordenou dois dos maiores projetos de colaboração jornalística da história: o Panama Papers, em 2016, e o Paradise Papers no ano seguinte. Além dessas mesas com os convidados estrangeiros, o Festival também trará eventos paralelos em um auditório anexo: uma oficina de humor, com Roberto Kaz e Afonso Cappellaro, redatores da seção de humor The Piauí Herald; e oficinas do YouTube sobre como usar melhor as ferramentas digitais. As mesas terão tradução simultânea. O público receberá fones de ouvido na entrada do auditório para ouvir os debates em português. Confira a programação completa do 8º Festival Piauí de Jornalismo: SÁBADO – 2 de dezembro Auditório principal 10h Lam Thuy Vo / The Markup, EUA 12h Conversa com o YouTube Mara Luquet – My News, Brasil 14h Marina Walker Guevara / Pulitzer Center, Argentina/EUA 16h Ben Smith / Semafor, EUA 18h Kumar Sambhav / The Reporters Collective, Índia Auditório de 100 lugares 10h às 16h Oficina de humor – The Piauí Herald Com Roberto Kaz e Afonso Cappellaro, redatores da seção de humor The Piauí Herald Humor informa? Que semelhança existe entre uma notícia satírica e uma coluna sobre política? Neste workshop participativo, o jornalista Roberto Kaz e o humorista Afonso Cappellaro, redatores do The piauí Herald, pretendem mostrar as regras básicas do humor satírico, para em seguida convidar os participantes a escreverem suas próprias versões, em duplas, a partir dos acontecimentos da semana. Ao final, as sátiras serão debatidas pela turma. Inscrições: https://www.sympla.com.br/evento/oficina-de-humor-piaui-herald/2215012 DOMINGO – 3 de dezembro Auditório principal 10h Tecnologia e criação de conteúdo Convidado do YouTube - a confirmar 12h Conversa com a FonteConvidado a confirmar 14h Claire Wardle / Brown University, EUA 16h Max Fisher / Autor de “A máquina do Caos”, EUA 18h Joseph Poliszuk / Armando.info, Venezuela Auditório de 100 lugares 10h30 às 17h30 Oficinas do YouTube Atividades gratuitas sobre como usar melhor as ferramentas digitais. A inscrição é gratuita e pode ser feita aqui: https://www.sympla.com.br/evento/oficinas-do-youtube/2226252 10h30 às 13h OFICINA DE CHECAGEM Luisa Alcantara e Silva (jornalista e colaboradora da Folha de S.Paulo), Sérgio Lüdtke (editor-chefe do Projeto Comprova) e Pedro Prata (editor-assistente do Estadão Verifica) Como descobrir, analisar e verificar conteúdos de desinformação Investigadores do Projeto Comprova ensinarão a jornalistas e estudantes de comunicação novas técnicas e ferramentas de monitoramento e investigação de conteúdos digitais associados à desinformação. 14 às 16h OFICINA GOOGLE TRENDS

Marco Tulio Pires (Google News Lab no Brasil) Participação de dois jornalistas da Piauí: Fabio Brisolla (coordenador das redes sociais da Piauí) e Daniel Bergamasco (editor do site da Piauí) Como cavar pautas com o Google Trends Aprenda a desvendar os segredos da maior base de dados publicamente disponível no mundo. Nesta oficina prática, você vai conhecer os fundamentos técnicos do Google Trends e descobrir como transformar essa ferramenta num celeiro de pautas para a sua cobertura. Não é preciso ter conhecimento técnico algum; recomendamos que você traga o seu laptop ou tablet. Prepare-se para fazer exercícios práticos e descobrir como o comportamento da busca do Google pode falar muito sobre o mundo. 16h30 às 17h30 OFICINA I.A. NAS REDAÇÕES Allen Chahad (chefe de Parcerias Estratégicas e Transformação e cofundador da Vibra, empresa spin-off de Tecnologia e estrategista digital do Grupo Bandeirantes) Inteligência Artificial e seu uso nas redações A Inteligência Artificial (IA) está transformando a maneira como as redações se organizam e conduzem seus fluxos de produção. Ela pode ser usada para automatizar tarefas, gerar conteúdo, analisar dados e até mesmo criar novas narrativas. Esta oficina discutirá possíveis aplicações da IA no jornalismo, desde a coleta de dados até a publicação de notícias. Bolsa YouTube para universitários No intuito de impulsionar o acesso à informação e incentivar as boas práticas do jornalismo, o YouTube, patrocinador do Festival Piauí, ofereceu 15 bolsas com acesso gratuito aos dois dias de festival para estudantes de universidades públicas que tenham cursado o Ensino Médio em escola pública. As inscrições ocorreram até o dia 30 de outubro e a lista dos ganhadores foi divulgada no dia 3 de novembro no site da piauí. Serviço do Festival Piauí de Jornalismo Data: 2 e 3 de dezembro (sábado e domingo) Horário: 10 às 18h Local: Cinemateca Brasileira Endereço: Largo Senador Raul Cardoso, 207 – Vila Clementino, São Paulo, SP Ingressos: R$ 900 (combo para os dois dias) R$ 600 (para cada um dos dias) R$ 100 (oficina de humor) *Assinantes compram com desconto. Estudantes e professores pagam meia-entrada. https://www.sympla.com.br/evento/festival-piaui-de-jornalismo-2023/2136236 Realização: Revista Piauí Patrocínio: YouTube Apoio: Itaú Cultural, Cinemateca Brasileira, Sociedade Amigos da Cinemateca e Azul Informações: https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/festival-piaui-de-jornalismo-passaporte/ Breve histórico dos convidados desta edição: Lam Thuy Vo_Estados Unidos Repórter do The Markup, uma plataforma de jornalismo de dados e tecnologia, Lam é professora associada na Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Já trabalhou no BuzzFeed News, The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera America e Planet Money da NPR. Lam administra uma comunidade para jornalistas negros e criou um guia para jornalistas negros em busca de crescimento na carreira, dados salariais, discriminação demográfica das redações e oportunidades de treinamento. Aqui tem uma série de reportagens assinadas por ela. Mara Luquet_My News_Brasil Jornalista, fundadora e CEO do canal MyNews, considerado pelo Google referência mundial em jornalismo no YouTube. Foi colunista de finanças pessoais da TV Globo e CBN, editora do Valor Econômico e criadora do caderno Folhainvest, da Folha de S.Paulo. Marina Walker Guevara_Argentina/ Estados Unidos Ex-diretora do Consórcio Internacional de Jornalistas Investigativos (ICIJ), editora-executiva do Pulitzer Center, integrante do Conselho do Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN). Quando era diretora do ICIJ, Marina Walker Guevara coordenou dois dos maiores projetos de colaboração jornalística da história: o Panama Papers, em 2016, e o Paradise Papers no ano seguinte. Essas investigações envolveram centenas de jornalistas do mundo todo e o uso de tecnologia para analisar centenas de milhões de dados financeiros de interesse público. Marina Guevara é pioneira no uso de Large Language Models e Inteligência Artificial.

Ben Smith_Semafor_Estados Unidos Ex-editor chefe do Buzzfeed News, ex-colunista de mídia do New York Times e cofundador e editor chefe do Semafor. Quando Ben Smith era editor chefe do Buzzfeed News, ele tomou a decisão controversa de publicar o dossiê Steele, um conjunto de alegações a respeito das conexões entre o então presidente americano Donald Trump e a Rússia. O dossiê apontava, entre outras questões, que Putin teria favorecido a campanha de Trump em oposição à de Hillary Clinton. Algumas das alegações foram corroboradas por investigações subsequentes. O dossiê foi oferecido para outros veículos, como o New York Times, que decidiram não publicá-lo. Na época, defendendo a publicação do BuzzFeed, Ben Smith disse para a equipe que a decisão de publicar o documento “não foi simples, e pessoas bem intencionadas podem discordar da nossa decisão. Mas publicar esse dossiê reflete como nós enxergamos o trabalho de repórteres em 2017.” Kumar Sambhav_Índia Cofundador do Reporters’ Collective, pesquisador da Universidade Princeton e fundador e diretor do Land Conflicts Watch. Em 2022, com a equipe doReporters’ Collective, Kumar Sambhav investigou mais de 500 mil anúncios políticos no Facebook na Índia. A investigação revelou como a plataforma de anúncios do Meta favoreceu o partido governante Bharatiya Janata. Outras investigações do jornalista mostram como Narendra Modi, o primeiro-ministro indiano, tem implementado um programa de vigilância que pode acabar monitorando todos os cidadãos indianos. Claire Wardle_Estados Unidos Professora na Brown University e ex-diretora. Claire Wardle cofundou a First Draft, uma plataforma voltada a estudar e combater a desinformação no ambiente digital. O projeto durou sete anos, nos quais Claire Wardle viajou o mundo oferecendo cursos e dando palestras sobre o combate à desinformação. No Brasil, ela ajudou a implementar o projeto Comprova, uma coalizão de dezenas de veículos jornalísticos que investigou informações suspeitas que surgiram na internet durante as duas últimas eleições presidenciais. Max Fisher_Estados Unidos Autor de A máquina do caos: como as redes sociais reprogramaram nossa mente e nosso mundo, ex-repórter do New York Times e colaborador do Crooked Media. O livro A máquina do caos, lançado no Brasil pela Todavia, é resultado de uma investigação minuciosa sobre o funcionamento das principais redes sociais. Ele entrevistou cientistas, políticos, teóricos da conspiração, empresários – e teve acesso a documentos secretos compartilhados por funcionários das empresas de redes sociais. Como repórter do New York Times ele cobriu esse assunto extensivamente. Joseph Poliszuk_Venezuela Cofundador e coeditor do Armando.info e membro do Consórcio Internacional de Jornalistas Investigativos (ICIJ). Em 2022 Joseph Poliszuk, com o auxílio sua equipe no site Armando.info, conseguiu identificar 3.718 garimpos (em sua maioria ilegais) na Amazônia. A investigação foi feita a partir de imagens de satélites com o auxílio de inteligência artificial.

[maggotaur]

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paddleyourownkanoo.com/2023/01/26/u-s-threatens-turkey-over-allegations-its-supplying-russian-airlines-with-spare-parts-in-defiance-of-western-sanctions/ cnbc.com/amp/2023/01/26/russia-south-africa-and-a-redesigned-global-order.html newsbreak.com/news/2903227126003/as-fighting-rages-in-ukraine-the-us-is-sending-drones-to-keep-an-eye-on-another-tense-corner-of-europe?noAds=1&_f=app_share&s=i3 newsbreak.com/news/2902612858614/full-list-of-nato-countries-sending-tanks-to-ukraine?noAds=1&_f=app_share&s=i3 msn.com/en-us/money/news/pandora-papers-reveal-volodymyr-zelenskys-web-of-offshore-companies/vi-AA16H8ZC washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/03/about-pandora-papers-investigation/ icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/frequently-asked-questions-about-the-pandora-papers-and-icij/ newsweek.com/russian-state-television-vladimir-solovyov-ukraine-holy-war-1775589 bbc.com/news/business-64244121 thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3815311-wyoming-lawmakers-propose-ban-on-electric-vehicle-sales/ metro.co.uk/2023/01/19/royal-mail-starts-moving-limited-number-of-parcels-after-cyber-attack-18124622/

theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/royal-mail-ransomware-attackers-threaten-to-publish-stolen-data personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/12556 bbc.com/news/business-64244121

metro.co.uk/2023/01/19/royal-mail-starts-moving-limited-number-of-parcels-after-cyber-attack-18124622/

theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/royal-mail-ransomware-attackers-threaten-to-publish-stolen-data newsbreak.com/news/2902671053940/russian-media-demands-germany-must-be-defeated-after-ukraine-gets-tanks?noAds=1&_f=app_share&s=i3

original.newsbreak.com/@eden-reports-1601258/2898185120947-there-will-be-no-cars-global-leaders-demand-a-ban-on-private-vehicles-amid-car-chip-shortage?noAds=1&_f=app_share&s=i3

Links

dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11660953/Im-no-dinosaur.html

euronews.com/green/2022/01/23/snow-falls-in-the-sahara-desert-for-the-fifth-time-in-40-years

electroverse.co/china-suffers-50crussia-all-time-record-lake-that-never-freezes-over-just-froze-cold-us-eu/

electroverse.co/deadly-snows-japan-icelands-coldest-dec-rare-polar-stratospheric-clouds/

[webionaire]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2021/booming-us-tax-haven-industry/

vulnerable communities.

The cache of confidential files, obtained by the ICIJ and shared with more than 150 media partners, describes only some of the trusts in the United States but is the most significant set of records ever made public from inside America’s trust industry.

[Trove of secret files details an opaque financial universe where the global elite shield their riches]

The trust documents come mostly from the Sioux Falls office of Trident Trust, a global provider of offshore services. In a written statement, Trident said it is committed to compliance with all applicable regulations and routinely cooperates with authorities. The company declined to answer questions about its clients

[mariacallous]

Open source research isn’t only about analysing social media or satellite imagery. Another important area involves investigating company structures and relationships.

However, official company registries can be unwieldy or difficult to navigate.

This is where OpenCorporates – a free repository of company registries aggregated from primary public sources, published in order to promote corporate transparency – can be helpful. OpenCorporates is clear about the provenance of their data, so you know where they collected each record, and when. This is critical for companies and finance research and investigations.

While there are other databases like it, OpenCorporates is the only one that covers so many jurisdictions (145 as at 16 June 2023). To see other sites that offer access to corporate registries, go to the companies and finance tab of the Bellingcat Online Investigation Toolkit.

Still, even user-friendly websites like OpenCorporates can be a daunting prospect – conducting searches one by one takes a great deal of time, and it can involve a lot of copying and pasting of search results. But the Open Corporates API can save a lot of time.

What is an API and Why Use One?

An API is an Application Programming Interface. Broadly speaking, it allows users to obtain data from a database without having to know about the structure or languages used to manage that database. Users can build new and interesting tools with API access or create different ways to look at the data they contain, as many previously did with the Twitter API, for example.

Put simply, if you’re researching data at scale, access to the API of an organisation that stores a lot of data can be a powerful resource. It can allow researchers to explore and compare data in ways that might not otherwise be possible. 

Imagine, for example, that you’re looking at a company and all the individuals and other companies related to it within OpenCorporates. If you did individual searches for each company and director, it would take a lot of note-taking and organising. Access to an API can allow you to pull all the data at once and create new methods of searching to more easily identify relationships.

Luckily, OpenCorporates provides free API access if you’re undertaking a public benefit project. We’ll detail how to apply for access later on in this guide.

Some investigative journalists say this method has helped them find leads earlier. David Szakonyi, co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, reflects that “by accessing OpenCorporates’ API, we achieved in less than a day what would have taken two people between four and six months to do”. OpenCorporates helped the ICIJ to connect companies and directors for over 240,000 companies as part of the Panama Papers investigation, before releasing it all as open data.

What follows is a guide on how to get the best from Open Corporates. If you have coding or tool-building experience, you will be able to do more. But even those who don’t can learn how to use it and gather all manner of potentially valuable and revealing information. Whatsmore, once you understand how to explore the OpenCorporates API, you can begin to transfer that knowledge to other large datasets that provide API access such as the OpenSanctions database.

Much of what is contained within this guide can also be explored in the below video by Rebecca Lee of OpenCorporates. But this guide aims to build upon this very useful resource.

[theyoungturks]

A global investigation has been launched after the 'Uber Files' revealed potentially huge criminal activity regarding operators on behalf of the driving app pressuring political establishment in several countries, swindling law enforcement, and even using violence against their drivers. Ana Kasparian discusses on The Young Turks. Watch LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET. http://youtube.com/theyoungturks/live Read more HERE: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/what-are-the-uber-files-guide "The Uber files is a global investigation into a trove of 124,000 confidential documents from the tech company that were leaked to the Guardian. The data reveals how Uber flouted the law, duped police, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments across the world. The leak consists of emails, iMessages and WhatsApp exchanges between the Silicon Valley giant’s most senior executives, as well as memos, presentations, notebooks, briefing papers and invoices. The files cover 40 countries and span from 2013 to 2017, the period in which Uber went from a plucky startup to a global behemoth, brute-forcing its way into cities around the world with little regard for taxi regulations. To facilitate a global investigation, the Guardian shared the data with 180 journalists at more than 40 media organisations via the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)." *** The largest online progressive news show in the world. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET. Help support our mission and get perks. Membership protects TYT's independence from corporate ownership and allows us to provide free live shows that speak truth to power for people around the world. See Perks: ▶ https://www.youtube.com/TheYoungTurks/join SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks TWITTER: ☞ http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks INSTAGRAM: ☞ http://www.instagram.com/TheYoungTurks TWITCH: ☞ http://www.twitch.com/tyt 👕 Merch: http://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey ▶ https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt Watchlist with Jayar Jackson ▶ https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA #TYT #TheYoungTurks #BreakingNews 220713__TB01 by The Young Turks

[jjbizconsult]

Uber Leaks

[todaynewsguru]

It’s about making amends, doing the right thing: Uber Files whistleblower

It’s about making amends, doing the right thing: Uber Files whistleblower

Mark MacGann, 52, a career lobbyist who worked for Uber between 2014 and 2016, has revealed himself as the whistleblower who provided The Guardian with 124,000 company records that constitute The Uber Files. The cache of internal emails, text messages, and documents, which The Guardian shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its media partners around the…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Pandora Papers

By now, you’ve likely heard about the Pandora Papers — the landmark reporting on financial secrecy havens, corruption, and the hidden wealth brought to you by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its 140 media partners worldwide.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/

This isn’t the ICIJ’s first rodeo: they’re the same consortium that brought us the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, leaks from the world’s tax havens and the elite law and accounting firms that enable the wealthy and powerful to live by different rules from the rest of us.

Each of these leaks have been almost unimaginably large: millions of documents, the otherwise invisible paper-trail left by likewise unimaginably vast fortunes amassed by the 0.1%. The scale and scope of these secrets makes them too big for any one news org to report out.

Hence the ICIJ, a consortium of hundreds of news organizations around the world, who bring both the raw human labor-hours and the specific, regional knowledge of the oligarchs implicated in the leaks to the reporting.

The ICIJ’s earlier landmark publications dealt with gargantuan leaks — but Pandora Papers are galactic, 29,000 accounts leaked from 14 offshore firms from all over the world: Panama, Seychelles, Hong Kong, Belize, BVI, Cyprus, Switzerland, Dubai.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/secrecy-brokers/

The arrangements themselves are characteristic of this kind of elite “financial planning,” which is to say they are idiotically complex, with companies in one country owning companies in another, which own companies in a third.

Each of these arrangements represents a risible fiction: a shell company is a business, a business is a person, that person resides in a file-drawer in the desk of a bank official on some distant treasure island.

10-figure assets can be owned by no one, until the instant some great beast liquidates them, whereupon these mysterious riches can be fully and incontrovertibly controlled by them, but only until the paperwork is signed, whereupon the assets disappear into mystery again.

These arrangements, complexified by their own sake by deranged lawyers and accountants, have various names. Finance regulators and their prey call this MEGO (“my eyes glaze over”). Merely reciting the schemes’ details plunges the listener into a drugged stupor.

I like Dana Claire’s version better, though: “The shield of boringness” — when a straightforwardly corrupt and unsupportable arrangement is armored by layers of pointless complexity.

Some things are hard to understand because they’re complicated — others are complicated so they’ll be hard to understand.

The ICIJ and its partners have done incredible work in trying to penetrate the shield of boringness.

Here’s their Twitter thread, summing up the headline findings:

https://twitter.com/ICIJorg/status/1444703213349969929

And the BBC’s “simple guide to the Pandora Papers leak” is quite good:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58780561

Reading these guides will give you the top-line findings, like the fact that Andrej Babis, the Czech Republic’s billionaire president, a self-styled “populist corruption fighter” who is up for re-election, used financial secrecy vehicles to acquire a $22m French chateau.

Or that Cherie and Tony Blair avoided £312,000 in tax by buying a multi-million-pound London townhouse for Cherie’s law practice through an offshore shell company owned by an ultrawealthy Bahraini pal of Tony Blair’s.

There’s more — Putin cronies, mafia hitmen, even Shakira (!), all using these offshore secrecy vehicles to buy and sell assets around the world.

I’m not going to rehearse all the scandals here — ICIJ and its partners have done a better job of it than I ever can.

Instead, I want to explore two recurring themes in the reporting.

First, the legality of these arrangements. Over and over again, in all the media organizations’ reports on these leaks, they stress that most of these financial MEGO shenanigans are legal.

What they mean is, these ultrawealthy people and their procurers have found a way to operate by a different set of laws from you and me. As with Propublica’s IRS Files, these leaks reveal two, separate parallel legal-financial systems.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/15/guillotines-and-taxes/#carried-interest

There’s a public system, the one you and I send an appreciable chunk of our annual income to, as part of the cost of living in a civilized world where there is fiscal space for public spending on roads, schools, hospitals, public health, firefighting and other necessities.

Then there’s the other system, a system that operates in the shadows, a system you need millions and millions to participate in, a system that lets you pay little tax, no tax, or even negative tax — when states and countries hand working people’s money over to the 0.1%.

When these arrangements come to light, its practicioners — plutocrats, elite enablers, captured regulators — always mount the same defense: “This ultra-secret parallel legal system is perfectly legal.” They’re (usually) not lying.

The legality is the true scandal. These leaks reveal, time and again, is that we live under the conservative ideology so summarized by Frank Wilhoit, with “in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

The beneficiaries of the secret, parallel elite legal system are its architects. The same City of London law firms and banks that sit at the center of these corrupt hairballs also lobby like hell for the creation and expansion of the secret legal system.

The Pandora Papers implicate finance ministers of Pakistan, the Netherlands, Brazil, Malta and France. Of course this corruption is legal — it’s being practiced by the people who write the laws! The King of Jordan’s bullshit is legal because he’s the fucking King of Jordan.

I’ll say it again: the legality of these scams is the true scandal. Ex-UK PM Tony Blair and his wife did something perfectly legal when they ducked hundreds of thousands in tax — they exploited a loophole that Tony Blair could have closed, but didn’t.

Blair — who transformed the Labour Party into an organisation that celebrated the “accomplishments” of billionaires — talks a lot about the evils of tax evasion, but Blair was PM for a decade. If he cared about tax evasion, he’d have closed these loopholes.

The other point to make is that “offshore” is a huge misnomer. The relationship of tiny, poor, finance-blighted tax-havens to the ultra-rich is as a kind of pinball flipper. They exist to make momentary contact with vast fortunes and then fire them off across the ocean.

The Aliyevs are brutal oligarchs who control Azerbaijan. They laundered £400m through distant tax havens, but the money landed in the United Kingdom, where they have bought up vast tracts of land — flipping some of it to the Queen of England’s Crown Estates.

The King of Jordan’s money ricochets from island to island, but it comes to rest — shrouded in secrecy — in Malibu, California, London, and Ascot, where he owns mansion upon mansion upon mansion.

The “offshore” money is firmly onshore. Just as Apple’s untaxed offshore billions were laundered into assets including US Treasury Bills, these dead-eyed monsters own huge swathes of LA, London, New York, Paris, Toronto, Vancouver…

What’s more, the enablers who wax fat by helping the corrupt navigate the secret law system are are largely at arm’s length — for example, many of the clients who fled Mossack Fonseca after the Panama Papers now own shell companies administered from the City of London.

The tax havens are increasingly onshore. Cyprus — the laundry of choice for corrupt Russian billions — isn’t a Caribbean island far from the jurisdiction of European tax investigators. It’s an EU member state, fully signed up to tax and law-enforcement treaties.

The American states are hotbeds of onshore-offshore corruption. Over and over, the Pandora Papers reference South Dakota’s role in helping the ultra-rich hide their wealth from the rest of us, enabling them to remain behind the secret legal system’s curtain.

South Dakota, in turn, is merely the current winner in the US states’ race to the bottom on enabling finance corruption. The granddaddy of corrupt state finance is Delaware, or, as Joe Biden calls it, “The corporate state of Delaware.”

https://prospect.org/power/corporate-state-of-delaware/

In many ways, Delaware is yesterday’s news — legislatures in Nevada and Wyoming have passed suites of financial-secrecy-friendly laws that make Delaware look like a model of financial transparency and corporate control — only to be surpassed by the South Dakota state house.

“Offshore” is bullshit. The call is coming from inside the house.

And the business about how this is all legal? It’s also bullshit. Yes, there are plenty of people who manage these corrupt arrangements without breaking laws, but that’s not the whole story.

Over and over, the Pandora Papers show the same procurers, banks, and structures that are used by “law abiding” plutes are also being used by literal murderers like “Lell the Fat One,” a mafia hitman, and corrupt officials who embezzle billions from government treasuries.

These systems aren’t kept secret because the people who design, operate and use them are planning to share them with us later and don’t want to ruin the surprise.

They know that they’re shady as fuck, and they know they’ve created a system whose beneficiaries include murderers and thieves. They know that the secret legal system is only legal because it’s secret.

They know it is so manifestly unjust and unfair that it could never withstand public scrutiny. The legal, offshore system of finance crimes is neither legal, nor offshore. It’s all around us, and it’s crooked as hell.

[rjzimmerman]

I just started reading the stories in the Washington Post. The stories are already creating havoc around the world with some governments (eight at last count) opening up investigations into the shenanigans of some of the politicians mentioned in the stories. Excerpt from this story from NPR:

A massive investigation from more than 600 journalists across the globe sheds new light into the shadowy world of offshore banking and the high-powered elites who use the system to their benefit.

The exposé, dubbed the "Pandora Papers," shows how the world's wealthy hide their money and assets from authorities, their creditors and the public by using a network of lawyers and financial institutions that promise secrecy.

It's built on a trove of 11.9 million records leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which in turn shared them with partner media outlets such as The Washington Post and The Guardian for help conducting the large-scale investigation.

"These are secretive, confidential documents from offshore tax havens and offshore specialists who work to help rich, powerful and sometimes criminal individuals create shell companies or trusts in a way that often helps either obscure assets or in some cases even help avoid paying taxes," senior ICIJ reporter Will Fitzgibbon told NPR's Weekend All Things Considered.

According to the authors, the term "offshore banking" was originally coined to refer to island nations with lax finance laws that allowed people to hide their assets.

But now it refers to places outside a person's home country where they can shelter their money without having to abide by the rules where they live.

The list includes some places you might not expect. The financial service companies that appear in the Pandora Papers do business in Belize, the British Virgin Islands, Singapore, Cyprus and Switzerland, as well as in U.S. states including South Dakota and Delaware.

Offshore accounts are not necessarily illegal. Many of the companies that responded to the journalists' requests for comment said they had not broken any laws.

But account holders can use offshore trusts and shell companies for illicit purposes, such as to avoid paying taxes or to fund criminal enterprises.