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February 14, 2025

Greetings From Amsterdam,

In this edition of OCCRP Weekly, we’re taking a look behind the scenes of our new investigation into an online gambling empire ([link removed]) — and the behind-bars interview that helped reporters piece together its inner workings.

When OCCRP reporters heard voice recordings published online of a man who identified himself as the jailed accountant of murdered Turkish Cypriot businessman Halil Falyali, their interest was immediately piqued. The man was laying out the details of what he alleged were illicit gambling operations he helped his boss orchestrate in places like Albania, Belarus, North Macedonia, Malta, and Armenia — all places where OCCRP has a strong reporting network.
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This man, Cemil Önal, had been arrested in the Netherlands in December 2023 on a Turkish Interpol warrant over his alleged role as “one of the masterminds” of Falyali’s murder. (He denies being involved in the killing and is now fighting extradition to Turkey.) Reporters spent three months figuring out exactly where Önal was being held, and another five months awaiting Dutch authorities’ permission to interview him.

Late last year, they were finally able to visit Önal, alongside a human rights lawyer representing him and a prison-approved interpreter.

Önal was wearing his own clothes and walking around freely. At one point, his blood sugar dropped and he left the interview room to ask guards for a chocolate bar.

“He doesn’t look like a typical accountant,” said one OCCRP reporter on the story, who is staying anonymous for safety reasons. Instead, he’s “this towering guy with tatted up arms and a gold chain.”

During the three-hour visit, reporters were able to record their conversation. Önal hand-drew diagrams as he explained how online gambling works; how the websites allegedly created for Falyali operated; how he oversaw a system of thousands of mule accounts to launder what he claimed was at least $80 million in illicit funds each month; and how he helped arrange some $15 million in “sponsorship” payments to public officials in Turkey and northern Cyprus a month.

A lack of documentation meant OCCRP was unable to independently verify the specific figures Önal provided, but an expert who studied similar operations in Asia said they were plausible.

Önal decided to speak to reporters because he is afraid his life would be in danger if he were extradited to Turkey — he knows too much about payouts made to powerful people, he said. By going public with what he knows, Önal said he was hoping Dutch authorities would understand the risk to his life and refuse to extradite him.

After the interview, OCCRP reporters began corroborating Önal’s claims in collaboration with 14 partner media outlets. They did this by digging up company, property, and travel records, accessing Turkish investigations and indictments, as well as conducting interviews across various countries.

“As OCCRP, our strength is in the local partners and the local knowledge,” the OCCRP reporter said.

For each country involved in the scheme, the collaborating reporters had a running dossier of information, and follow up-questions to bring to Önal. Each weekend for months, he would reach out to reporters by phone to answer follow-up questions. Some 20 additional hours of interviews were recorded.

Through their reporting, journalists found over $60 million worth of properties — purchased by Falyali’s widow the year after her husband’s murder — in Dubai, which Önal identified as a major base for the alleged organization’s ongoing operations. (She did not respond to questions about the source of funds used to buy the properties.)

Turkish prosecutors also claimed that the organization recruited thousands of people to open bank, credit card, cryptocurrency, and online payment accounts to move the illicit gambling proceeds. But it’s the “sponsorships,” or pay-outs to officials, that Önal says allowed this online gambling scheme to operate.

“We’re called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project because we report on the two things, and it’s also just well-known that organized crime depends on corruption,” the OCCRP reporter said. “But it’s so rare that we get a story where we see the symbiotic relationship between the two laid out so clearly.”


** Read the full story ([link removed])
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** Following Up On The Facts
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** Investigative Reporting Is Free Speech, Not ‘Treason’
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We got a bit of a surprise recently when an OCCRP story from five years ago became the centerpiece of a major right-wing propaganda attack in the U.S.

As the administration of President Donald Trump and his new Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency have been effectively dismantling USAID, some of the aid agency’s grantees have come under fire in recent weeks. We’re one of them. Online conspiracists latched onto a 2019 OCCRP story on Rudy Giuliani, claiming it was part of a “deep state” plot to get Donald Trump impeached during his first term as U.S. president.

The truth? Our story was just old-fashioned journalism. In this first-person account ([link removed]) , our reporter breaks down how he came to write the story — through talking to sources on the ground in Ukraine:

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“The story started as an investigation into the same target that Giuliani was after: Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian gas company he worked for, Burisma. But the thing about objective reporting is that it can lead you to unexpected places.”
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As he recounts, the article received little fanfare at the time, mostly catching the attention of Ukraine-watchers. But two months later, a U.S. whistleblower released a report alleging that Trump had pressured Ukraine’s president into investigating the Bidens. That report sparked Trump’s first impeachment — and cited in the footnotes of the whistleblower report was our investigation.

It’s worth noting a couple of things:
* While OCCRP has received grants from USAID, our donors are contractually obligated to stay out of editorial work.
* None of these attacks dispute the findings of our investigations, which are carefully reported and rigorously fact-checked.

Speaking of Trump and USAID…


** Judicial Order Temporarily Restores Aid Frozen by Trump
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A U.S. federal judge has temporarily stopped President Donald Trump's administration from halting foreign aid contracts ([link removed]) . The legal order issued late Thursday to restore funding came in response to a lawsuit ([link removed]) filed by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Journalism Development Network, which is OCCRP’s parent organization.

District Judge Amir Ali found that the Trump administration had ordered the immediate suspension of funding for thousands of programs without reviewing each program. Ali determined that the administration's actions were "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law."

We’ll be continuing our independent work, with or without U.S. funding.

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** New OCCRP Deep Dives
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** Crackdown on Narcos Reveals Alleged Lithuanian Trafficking Group
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An allegedly reformed “global kingpin” of a drug trafficking and money laundering syndicate may have continued trafficking cocaine ([link removed]) after his extradition and release from prison, according to a memo found within the NarcoFiles ([link removed]) . The leak of emails from the Colombian prosecutor’s office alleges that Lithuanian Rokas Karpis continued trafficking drugs after his detention, release from prison, and supposed reinvention as a currency trader.

The memo focuses on a 2017 cocaine seizure of a sailboat co-led by Karpis. Neither Karpis nor his co-conspirator were charged in connection with the Afalina seizure. Three months after the event, however, the duo of traffickers were sanctioned by the U.S. for allegedly coordinating international drug trafficking alongside organizations such as Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel. Experts say these events could be an indicator of Lithuania’s increased involvement in the international drug trafficking sphere.


** Read the full story ([link removed])
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Plus, dig into our NarcoFiles series ([link removed]) on how organized crime groups are evolving — and creating new victims in their pathway.


** PNG Central Bank Chief Appointed Amid Money Laundering Investigation
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When a money-laundering probe was launched in mid-2023 into Elizabeth Genia — a long-serving bank official and then-acting governor of the Bank of Papua New Guinea (BPNG) — she lodged a legal challenge to freeze the investigation. It violated her right to privacy, she argued.

The searches — which came just months before Genia was appointed as the permanent governor of the central bank — focused on allegations that she had received personal check payments from two companies working with BPNG.

That’s according to court documents obtained by OCCRP ([link removed]) . Soon after, Genia’s appeal to halt the investigation was dismissed. It’s unclear if the probe continues, or if she has appealed further to stop the case. But to date, Genia continues to run the BPNG. Documents also reveal that Genia was previously investigated over a deal involving guns for BPNG’s security team. The police focus on Genia in the two cases has not been previously reported.

The revelations come after a 2024 warning by the Financial Action Task Force , a multilateral institution that tackles financial crime, that the country’s failure to control risks including corruption could lead to Papua New Guinea being put on its “grey list” of countries that don’t do enough to combat money laundering.


** Read the full story ([link removed])
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** Crime and Corruption News
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A man convicted in one of Asia’s largest-ever money laundering schemes will be extradited to his native country of China ([link removed]) after losing an appeal in a Montenegro court. Wang Shuiming was originally arrested in Singapore in 2023 for his role in a syndicate that laundered at least $2.3 billion in illicit profits from illegal gambling and online fraud. Singapore authorities confiscated about $147 million from him. He was convicted the following year and deported to Japan before arriving in Montenegro earlier this year by private jet.

Shuiming was arrested in Montenegro on an international warrant from China. While his reasons for traveling to the Balkan country are unclear, he registered a real estate company there in December 2024. Newly reviewed corporate records show he also has a firm in Hong Kong that owns an $11 million apartment.

As armed groups have battled over a cocaine corridor on Colombia’s frontier with Venezuela in the last month, two community leaders and five minors have been murdered ([link removed]) , while another 50,000 people have fled their homes. Some 20,000 others are trapped in their communities as battles rage between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and a rival drug-dealing group.

The Venezuelan military has announced that it has partnered with Colombia to fight the ELN on its side of the border. The statement surprised some analysts, because it has been well-documented that Venezuela has provided shelter for the ELN. Military intelligence reports obtained by OCCRP allege that high-ranking Venezuelan officials have even “collaborated” with the ELN in smuggling drugs.

Two mass graves have been discovered in the Libyan desert this month, and are believed to contain around 50 bodies belonging to migrants ([link removed]) . One was discovered near a makeshift detention center that police raided after receiving a tip about a criminal organization that had been detaining and torturing migrants. Authorities freed 76 survivors who were physically injured and malnourished, and arrested three people in connection with the trafficking ring. Survivors also reported another mass grave nearby, potentially containing another 70 bodies.

The recovered bodies have been sent for autopsies. The current crackdown on migrant smuggling in Libya follows a damning report by an anonymous group of researchers — as well as accusations by a member of European Parliament — that the EU has been complicit in exploitation ([link removed]) between the Libyan and Tunisian border.

The European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights planned to visit Kyrgyzstan ([link removed]) later this month to discuss concerns over the arrests of opposition leaders and journalists. But shortly after Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov extended the invitation, the visit was cancelled. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the trip had only been postponed. But no new date has been announced.

Kyrgyz opposition leader Temirlanbek Sultanbekov and members of his party were arrested days before a mid-November election for the city council of the capital, Bishkek. They were charged with vote–buying. Sultanbekov is on a hunger strike that has carried on for much of his detention. Four reporters, meanwhile, were charged with inciting and organizing mass protests earlier in the year. Two of them were handed prison sentences of five and six years in what press freedom groups have called a crackdown on free expression.

We’ll be back with more next week.
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P.S. Thanks for reading OCCRP Weekly. Feel free to reply to this email with feedback, thoughts, or questions.

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