September 5, 2025

Hello John,

The government in Kyrgyzstan has taken an aggressive new tack in its ongoing crackdown on independent media, seeking to prevent stories from even being published.

Read on for this and more of the latest in global organized crime and corruption.

Inside Kyrgyzstan's Crackdown

In Kyrgyzstan, an ongoing crackdown on the free press appears to have taken an even more draconian turn, with entire newsrooms being dismantled and serious journalism effectively criminalized.

The crackdown has seen legal attacks launched on journalists — some of which is the stuff of farce.

This week in the capital of Bishkek, four former staffers from OCCRP member center Kloop, one of the last remaining independent outlets in Kyrgyzstan, went on trial, accused of conspiring to “incite mass unrest.” 

Witnesses declined to back prosecution allegations. “No one gave incriminating testimony, although they are presented as prosecution witnesses,” said legal expert Nurbek Toktakunov, who attended the hearing . “Why they are called that is unclear.” 

The defendants are two accountants and two cameramen, and all four have pleaded guilty — despite their lawyers and Kloop insisting the case against them is built on a false premise. 

A Kloop lawyer who reviewed the indictment against the four — which was kept under wraps for weeks and not shared with the public until just before the trial opened — said much of the case revolves around five videos critical of the government, which prosecutors say the cameramen helped to produce.

However, those videos were never published by Kloop — they appeared on Temirov Live, another investigative outlet dismantled in a crackdown a year earlier, which now operates from exile in a limited capacity. The senior leadership of Kloop is now in exile, too.

“The criminal prosecution is not linked to specific stories,” said Kloop co-founder Rinat Tukhvatshin. “In our case, there is not a single story in the indictment that was published on Kloop. [...] Kyrgyz authorities are simply finding any way to cause maximum harm to the media, the organization, and the people associated with it" 

Read the full story →

More OCCRP Reporting

The Bank of Lithuania has fined fintech firm Pervesk UAB 130,000 euros ($151,525) for violating anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing rules, citing “significant shortcomings” in the company’s risk management and due diligence procedures.

Pervesk was one of the central companies in a troubled cryptocurrency project launched by the Lithuanian start-up Bankera. After raising over 100 million euros in an initial coin offering (ICO) in 2018, the value of the company’s token later collapsed, leaving many investors facing losses.

Earlier this year, an investigation by OCCRP and Lithuania's 15min found evidence that Bankera’s co-founders used a portion of the ICO funds to finance luxury real estate purchases through a Vanuatu-based bank they had discreetly acquired.

Some of the funds transferred to the bank were collected through Pervesk accounts.    

Following the investigation, Lithuanian authorities launched a probe into the founders of Bankera.

Pervesk’s head Darius Kulikauskas told 15min he was unable to comment on specifics, but conceded that the company’s risk management procedures “could have been better.” 

Previously, lawyers acting for Bankera denied that the ICO was in any way fraudulent.

Despite investor losses — and punitive action from regulators — Bankera and other companies in its orbit remain active in Lithuania’s fintech sector.

Read the full story →  

Protests Over Alleged Plans to Weaken Serbian Broadcaster 

Members of the Serbian diaspora demonstrated today outside the Netherlands headquarters of United Group, the owner of one of Serbia’s last independent broadcasters.

Last week, OCCRP and Serbian member center KRIK published a leaked recording of a conversation between United Group CEO Stan Miller and the CEO of the state-owned Telekom Srbija, Vladimir Lučić.

In the conversation, the pair discussed plans to remove Aleksandra Subotić as chief executive of a United Group subsidiary which owns several Serbian outlets, including the TV station N1, which has doggedly covered the mass anti-government protests that have roiled the country for the past nine months.   

“It is shocking a Dutch company would try to limit media freedom in Serbia,” said protest organizer Dunja Raduluv.

Members of the Serbian diaspora also protested on August 31 in New York City, while another demonstration is slated to take place tomorrow in London.

Read the full story →

Reporting From the Rubble: The Life of a Journalist in Gaza

For Mohamed Abu Shahma, work is something done between funerals, searches for food and water, and efforts to keep his family safe under the ever-present threat of bullets and bombs.

The Gaza-based reporter for the Lebanese news platform Daraj, and a contributor to OCCRP, has lost 24 relatives — including his brother, sister, and aunt — since Israel declared war on Hamas in October 2023.

He has also lost numerous colleagues; almost 200 journalists and media workers have been killed there since October 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Among those killed were Abu Shahma’s close friends, including some he’d spoken with just moments before they were struck down.

But he keeps going.

“Because leaving journalism would mean abandoning my people, and their stories would be lost,” he said.

Read Abu Shahma’s story →

OCCRP Analysis

Alleged Cartel Members Buy Time With Arcane Legal Provision

An arcane legal provision in Mexico intended to protect individuals against miscarriages of justice is being used by alleged serious criminals to stall legal proceedings and block extraditions.

The amparo — “protection” in Spanish — was enshrined in the constitution of the then-independent Republic of Yucatán in 1841. Mexico adopted the provision in 1861, thereby granting individuals the right to challenge any law, government action, or judicial decision if they believed it infringed on their constitutional rights. 

There have been cases in Mexico where amparos have been successfully used to protect the rights of victims of miscarriages of justice, such as helping secure the release in 2019 of six indigenous Nahuas wrongfully imprisoned over land and water conflicts.

But all too often, it’s people accused of serious crimes who benefit from the legal mechanism, which experts say has been abused to prolong trials, delay extraditions, and avoid high-security prisons.

OCCRP investigative reporters Lilia Saúl and Jonny Wrate explain →

News Briefs

• A court in Lebanon this week ordered the release of former central bank governor Riad Salameh on bail of more than $20 million, almost a year after his arrest over the alleged embezzlement of $44 million in public funds. 
   
• Tunisian civil society groups are sounding the alarm after the sudden shuttering of the Access to Information Authority, an independent public body tasked with guaranteeing citizens’ constitutional right to access information and ensuring transparency in public affairs.
   
• The former head of Ukraine’s Security Service’s cyber department, Illia Vitiuk, has been charged with illicit enrichment and making false asset declarations. Prosecutors allege his family acquired real estate in Kyiv worth more than $604,300 through suspicious payments tied to his wife’s business and firms linked to organized crime.
   
• Azerbaijan arrested photojournalist Ahmad Mukhtar last week as part of an ongoing crackdown on OCCRP member center Meydan TV and independent media more broadly.
   
• Congo’s former Justice Minister Constant Mutamba was sentenced to three years of forced labor this week for embezzling public funds, including $19 million earmarked as reparations for war victims.
   
• Peru’s former President Alejandro Toledo was handed a second prison sentence of 13 years and four months this week for money laundering and corruption as part of a case tied to bribes he received from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht — and which he spent on expensive real estate. The latest sentence will be served concurrently with his existing 20-year prison term.
   
• Bolivian authorities arrested former Interior Minister Arturo Murillo yesterday following his extradition from the U.S., where he had been serving a prison sentence for money laundering and corruption. He faces multiple legal cases in Bolivia, including an eight-year sentence over the 2019 purchase of $2.3 million of tear gas from Ecuador.
   
• Amnesty International this week called on the Syrian government to ensure accountability over what it described as the “deliberate” extrajudicial executions of Druze men and women in the southern province of Suwayda in July.