If you find this newsletter of value, click the ❤️ above 🙏🏻☀️Welcome to Edition #11 of perspicacity’s Crime & Corruption Update. This edition features:
➡️ How companies like Meta, Google, and the world’s largest banks are used by large-scale fraud operations in Israel, Europe and the country of Georgia.
➡️ The journalists silenced in Paraguay for investigating crime and corruption in a region known for the trafficking of weapons, drugs, cars and cigarettes.
➡️ The rail link to China that supercharged illegal wildlife tourism in Laos.
➡️ The journalist murdered in Haiti while investigating a former senator’s alleged corruption and smuggling operation.
➡️ An insight into the investigation of Africa’s largest data leak, which showed how a bank in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was used as a vehicle for looting by the country’s president and his associates.
➡️ Alleged corruption in a major roadbuilding project awarded to a company linked to a DRC government minister.
➡️ The loopholes that allow criminals to launder and invest their money in French real estate.
perspicacity is committed to fact-based reporting that meets the highest standards of journalistic integrity. No content is AI-generated. To access the full stories summarised below, click on the headline.
CHINA / LAOS
How a rail link with China supercharged an illegal wildlife tourism industry in Laos
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 22 July 2025
The China–Laos Railway has enabled a dramatic expansion of illegal wildlife trade in Laos, transforming the country into a critical node in transnational trafficking networks. According to this report, the railway’s launch spurred a tourism boom that is being exploited to funnel Chinese visitors to shops openly selling illegal wildlife products — including rhino horn, elephant ivory, bear products, tiger parts and pangolin products.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
DRC minister owned shares in company that made millions from road project
Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project, 18 July 2025
The DRC’s Minister of State for Regional Planning, Guy Loando, and his wife controlled over a third of the shares of a company that in 2019 won a $25 million deal to improve a key highway. The company was subcontracted to work on the state-backed project by a Chinese consortium headed by business magnate Cong Maohuai, a former client and mentor of Loando, who was a newly-sworn-in Congolese senator at the time.
The DRC’s financial watchdog has accused the consortium of failing to declare millions in toll revenues, and inflating the budgets for construction projects on the highway. Loando has shifted his family’s stake in SIC to his wife’s brother-in-law.
Related:
Major road project built on corruption risk
Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, 18 July 2025
Inside the Congo Hold-Up: How a captured bank enabled grand corruption
Anti-Corruption Data Collective, 10 July 2025
This briefing examines the high-level financial operation that transformed a privately-owned bank in the DRC into an engine of grand corruption. In 2021, BGFIBank suffered the largest data leak in African history. Millions of documents analysed in the subsequent ‘Congo Hold-Up’ investigation revealed the bank was looted by President Joseph Kabila and his associates. By collating insights from dozens of these journalistic reports, this briefing peels back the layers to reveal how corrupt financial enablers threaten the integrity of the international financial system.
FRANCE
Investigating company and real estate ownership in France
Anti-Corruption Data Collective, 5 July 2025
In a first-ever attempt to connect company records to real estate ownership information in France, Transparency International, Transparency International France, and the Anti-Corruption Data Collective have uncovered significant loopholes through which criminals can launder and invest their money in French real estate.
GLOBAL
Behind the scam: How fraudsters use social media, software, and shell companies to steal millions
Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project, 25 July 2025
Professional scammers call upon a global network of service providers to execute their work in a sophisticated, streamlined fashion.
In this investigation, OCCRP presents dozens of companies – including Meta, Google and many of the world’s largest banks – whose services were used by two large-scale fraud operations, one based in Israel and Europe, and the other in the country of Georgia.
From external marketers who harvest victims’ data to money transfer services used to extract their cash, these players range from legitimate businesses exploited by the scammers to entities that appear purpose-built to help them carry out their nefarious work.
HAITI
Smuggling, ill-gotten gains and suspected ties to gangs: The shady dealings of former senator Rony Célestin
Forbidden Stories, 4 July 2025
In 2019, Haitian journalist Néhémie Joseph, originally from the city of Mirebalais, was murdered while denouncing the alleged smuggling and corruption of former senator and businessman Rony Célestin.
Sources speaking to Forbidden Sources, which has continued Joseph’s investigation, have implicated Célestin in the trafficking of weapons and contraband across the border with the Dominican Republic. A new judge, the fourth in five years, has recently been appointed to take over the investigation into the journalist’s murder. The former senator remains charged in the case.
In addition to a villa in Canada, Célestin and his wife reportedly owned property in Port-au-Prince and a villa in a luxury seaside resort in the Dominican Republic. Célestin, already sanctioned by the US and Canada, is in the crosshairs of a UN committee of experts, which has also recommended sanctions.
Related:
In Haiti, the murder of a journalist who denounced corruption and a prosecutor above the law
Forbidden Stories, 4 July 2025
PARAGUAY
19 journalists killed in the last 30 years. A country in the grip of organized crime
Forbidden Stories, 8 July 2025
Nineteen journalists have been killed in Paraguay – and two in towns on the Brazilian side of the Paraguay border – in roughly 30 years. Seven of them were murdered in the Pedro Juan Caballero region amid rampant corruption and impunity. Others have been forced to flee the country. Those who remain are forced to self-censor.
At a strategic location in the heart of South America, Pedro Juan is a key node for the illegal trafficking of weapons, cigarettes, cars, and drugs from Bolivia to Brazil and on to ports in Europe. It’s a dangerous city in general, and even more so for journalists, who are killed at a similar rate to those in Acapulco, Mexico, which is known for its cartel violence and targeting of journalists.
Forbidden Stories and its partners have taken on the investigations of the journalists whose work cost them their lives.
Related:
Alianza Paraguay: Why Forbidden Stories launched a global investigation into organized crime
Forbidden Stories, 8 July 2025
Guns, smugglers, and a journalist’s murder on the Paraguay-Brazil border
Forbidden Stories, 8 July 2025
Forbidden Stories, 8 July 2025
How a prominent politician and businessman’s fall exposed corruption in Paraguay
Forbidden Stories, 8 July 2025
RUSSIA / UAE
Alleged Russian tax fraud mastermind funneled millions into luxury Dubai properties
Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project, 23 July 2025
A company owned by the alleged mastermind behind a massive tax fraud in Russia poured millions into two luxury hotel resorts in Dubai, while the whistleblower who uncovered the tax scam died in a Moscow prison after being arrested and jailed.
Also worth exploring…
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 14 July 2025
CHINA / JAPAN A Chinese fentanyl smuggling network’s footprints in Japan
Bellingcat, 7 August 2025
COLOMBIA Verdict in landmark case finds Colombian ex-president guilty of bribery
International Crisis Group, 29 July 2025
COSTA RICA Costa Rica wiretaps raise questions over Mexican bank takeover bid
Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project, 17 July 2025
DENMARK / UKRAINE Apparent affiliate of Danish company helps Russians export grain from occupied Ukraine
Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project, 15 July 2025
EU / ISRAEL EU risks breaching international law over Israeli gas deal, legal experts say
Global Witness, 14 July 2025
NETHERLANDS Vitesse kicked out of Dutch football after revelations about secret links to Abramovich
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 11 August 2025
PERU How Peru’s legislature is allowing organized crime to thrive
Human Rights Watch, 8 July 2025
SOUTH AFRICA New High Court ruling orders whistleblower be reinstated and receive over 10 years of backpay
Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, 13 August 2025
UKRAINE Dnipro: The front line of crime
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 4 July 2025
UKRAINE War transforms Ukraine’s criminal landscape, causing economic and social damage
UN Office on Drugs & Crime, 18 July 2025