Photo credit: The Namibian

Facing a key party congress, top officials in Namibia’s ruling party allegedly skimmed money from a lucrative fishing deal to buy votes for President Hage Geingob.

Top Namibian officials allegedly used a secret company to siphon millions of dollars from a state-backed fishing deal.

Court documents obtained by reporters describe how the officials then funneled the cash to multiple companies controlled by people connected to the ruling SWAPO party.

Part of that money, according to statements, emails, and scribbled notes, was then used to pay off electors for President Hage Geingob at a critical party congress.

Source : https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/fishing-with-dynamite-the-secret-scheme-that-helped-namibias-president-stay-in-power

Image: Mike Coppola / Getty

The Angolan billionaire’s company had “no intention” to carry out economic activity in Malta, the island nation’s authorities said.

Malta is reportedly demanding payment of more than $275,000 total in taxes and fines from a telecom consultancy firm owned by Angolan billionaire Isabel dos Santos after rejecting its call for a tax clawback.

According to MaltaToday, the tax probe was launched after Luanda Leaks, a 2020 investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, exposed dos Santos’ business empire and decades of insider deals that helped her become Africa’s richest woman.

The Maltese tax agency hit Kento Holding Ltd., one of 14 Malta-based companies controlled by the eldest daughter of Angola’s former president José Eduardo dos Santos, with a fresh tax bill after finding it was not entitled to a $119,000 tax refund.

It is “highly unlikely that the company has real intentions of conducting an economic activity despite being registered since 1 September 2018, as no turnover was reported,” the Commissioner for Revenue said, according to the Maltese news outlet.

The firm is now fighting the tax bill, the outlet reported.

A lawyer representing dos Santos did not respond to ICIJ’s request for comment.

Source: https://www.icij.org/investigations/luanda-leaks/isabel-dos-santos-maltese-consulting-firm-served-with-230000-tax-bill/

Credit: DPA/Alamy Live News

Sezgin Baran Korkmaz, a Turkish tycoon now on the run over a half-billion-dollar fraud scheme involving members of fundamentalist Mormon sect, hosted influential Americans on a backchannel trip to Turkey to free jailed American pastor Andrew Brunson.

Trump backer Tommy Hicks Jr. and former C.I.A. Director James Woolsey flew to Turkey in September 2018 to help secure the release of Brunson from Turkish detention.

The men were hosted by Sezgin Baran Korkmaz, whose now-convicted U.S. business associates included an Armenian-American organized crime figure and members of a Mormon polygamist sect.

The backchannel mission to free Brunson was organized by Nancye Miller, a lobbyist married to Woolsey, who was in communication with the office of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The Americans mostly stayed in their hotel, and did not manage to have a planned meeting with Erdoğan. The pastor was freed the following month, but it’s unclear what led to that decision.

Source : https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/turkish-tycoon-trump-fundraiser-and-ex-cia-chief-involved-in-2018-attempt-to-free-us-pastor-held-in-turkey

Prosecutors in Malta charged on Saturday former top government official Keith Schembri, his father and nine business associates with money laundering and fraud. Schembri was accused years ago by murdered journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia of corruption.
Schembri, who served as former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s chief of staff, and the others were charged with money laundering, criminal conspiracy and accountancy crimes to fraud, false testimony and the falsification of documents.

They pleaded not guilty but were denied bail after prosecution said they had access to means to abscond and to an obscure financial system. The suspects have also shown a propensity to obstruct justice when they allegedly falsified documents and made untrue declarations to state authorities, local media cited the prosecution as saying.

Source: https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/14092-ex-maltese-pm-aide-among-11-charged-with-corruption

Image: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images

An investment scheme involving tycoon Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais exposed in ICIJ’s Paradise Papers investigation bore “obvious” risks of possible corruption, a Jersey court finds.

A court in the Channel Islands has fined a team of accountants and economists who for years ignored “obvious” risks of possible corruption and embezzlement when providing services to an investment management company working with the government of Angola.

In a decision published this week, Jersey’s Royal Court fined LGL Trustees Ltd more than $835,000 for two breaches of the island’s anti-money laundering laws. LGL Trustees pleaded guilty in December.

From 2010 to 2016, according to the judgment, LGL pocketed more than $1 million in fees providing services connected to the management of Angola’s sovereign wealth fund, whose investments were overseen by Jean-Claude Bastos de Morais. Despite questionable and what the prosecution called “colossal” fees paid to Bastos, the reluctance of banks to deal with him, and concerns over a prior conviction, the trust company “effectively opened the gateway to possible money-laundering” in accepting the work, the court decision said.

Source: https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/trust-company-fined-835000-for-opening-gateway-to-possible-money-laundering-in-angola/