Get the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ stories in your inbox, each week. You’ll be the first to know when our next investigation drops, and get all the behind-the-scenes stories too.
Wondering what you get? Take a look below before you sign up.
Last week, ICIJ quietly marked three years since the publication of its most ambitious project to date: the Pandora Papers. Based on the most expansive leak of tax haven files in history, the investigation revealed the secret deals and hidden assets of more than 330 politicians and high-level public officials, as well as an array of criminals, corporations and celebrities.
Last year, the Internal Revenue Service took a little-known tax law off the shelf and successfully challenged a $2.4 billion deduction claimed by multinational telecommunications firm Liberty Global. But the role of Liberty Global’s own tax advisor — the accounting giant Deloitte — received minimal scrutiny. Plus, the U.S. officially returned 297 cultural artifacts smuggled out of India, and former billionaire Isabel dos Santos lost an appeal to overturn a global asset freeze.
Behind the scenes of the Swazi Secrets investigation, ICIJ's reporter encountered smiling citizens, gun-toting security, and a simmering undercurrent of fear and mystery. Plus, the U.S. levels new sanctions against alleged senior figures from spyware group Intellexa, and ICIJ partner Expresso reports that former Portuguese official Antonio Mexia kept $5.9 million in assets in a previously unknown offshore company.
A top EU court ordered Apple to pay Ireland over $14 billion in back taxes after ruling that the tech giant received tax advantages — some revealed in ICIJ's Paradise Papers — amounting to an "illegal subsidy." Also, U.S. officials trying to tie a $300 million superyacht to a sanctioned Russian oligarch allege that payments for the boat were made by his niece.
A new ICIJ investigation shows how intense lobbying led the IRS, in 2011, to effectively abandon one of its most powerful tools to take on wealthy tax evaders. Plus, European banking giant Nordea has agreed to pay $35 million to New York’s financial services watchdog, a U.S. government audit finds shortcomings in the FDA’s oversight of risky medical devices, and more.
A U.K. court has issued worldwide freezing orders on assets belonging to Bulgarian fraudster Ruja Ignatova and some of her associates, months after ICIJ revealed the so-called “Cryptoqueen” had found refuge in Dubai before her 2018 disappearance. Plus, dozens of ancient Khmer objects were returned home to Cambodia, and the U.N. took another big step toward a global tax convention.
International cartel leader Edin "Tito" Gacanin is now living freely in Dubai, where he set up a company to employ a number of his alleged underlings, leaked records reveal. Plus, a former British Virgin Islands leader has been sentenced to prison on drugs and money laundering charges, the U.S. is lagging on financial transparency, and more.
The former Czech prime minister purchased the property through a series of offshore accounts and failed to disclose the asset while in politics. Plus, advocacy groups in Angola are pressing Portuguese and Angolan authorities for answers on the whereabouts of assets seized from Isabel dos Santos, and more.
Following a lengthy sanctions evasion investigation by U.K. authorities, last month the man who manages Russian billionaire Petr Aven’s Surrey estate agreed to forfeit more than $1 million to the country’s National Crime Agency. Also, Swazi lawmakers have quizzed Eswatini's finance minister about the leaked documents at the heart of ICIJ's Swazi Secrets investigation, and more.
Thousands of emails obtained by ICIJ offer an unprecedented glimpse inside the sophisticated sales operation that has funneled more than $1.7 billion from U.S. states and municipalities to Israel since the war in Gaza began. Plus, G20 finance leaders vow to tax the ultrarich after a meeting in Rio de Janeiro but hedge on how to do so.
As Venezuela heads into a critical election on July 28, a new report details how the Latin American country became a laboratory for digital repression, bolstering the current regime and accelerating democratic backsliding across the region. Plus, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema fired the board of the country’s anti-graft body, and we asked two experts why Russian disinformation campaigns keep citing ICIJ investigations.
A former aide to President Joe Biden and the leader of a group raising money to help his re-election campaign helped to organize a meeting between Sen. Robert Menendez and a member of the Qatari royal family. Plus, Treasury says a yearlong IRS push to recover back taxes from millionaires has yielded more than $1 billion, and Nordea bank faces charges for allegedly violating anti-money laundering laws.
Late Friday, a Panamanian judge acquitted all 28 defendants of money laundering charges in the Panama Papers-related trial. Legal experts say the ruling raises questions about the progress of Panama’s anti-corruption efforts but the country’s new president welcomed it, labeling the 2016 investigation “an international hoax." Plus, economist Gabriel Zucman touts a proposal for governments to tax the ultrarich and raise up to $250 billion per year.
Last week, the IRS announced its next move in a long-faltering fight against tax dodging: proposing to close a long-time loophole that enables corporate structures to maximize tax deductions and minimize tax liability. Plus, big oil companies reject an activist-led transparency push, and more.
In December 2021, months after Zambia's former president was ousted, Zambian financial crime investigators alerted their counterparts in Eswatini to years-old serious corruption allegations against him, our latest Swazi Secrets investigation reveals. Plus, Lithuania takes a step towards amending its citizenship laws after revelations Roman Abramovich's children used Lithuanian passports as part of a financial restructuring.