Every few days, she needed nearly 8,000 gallons of water from borehole pumps to keep her farm going. The pumps required a reliable supply of electricity, but since March 2024, Zambia’s rolling blackouts had left swathes of the country without power, turning everyday tasks into Herculean struggles. Sometimes she had only four hours of power a day.

The blackouts had a “cascading effect,” Newlove said. Without electricity she couldn’t refrigerate the few meager vegetables she could harvest. She stopped breeding and slaughtering animals. She was unable to sell to many of her regular customers, like local “mom and pop shops.” She had to drastically reduce the area she farmed and cut back on planting, and she couldn’t hire seasonal workers.

The rolling blackouts affecting Newlove’s farm were a result of “load shedding,” scheduled power cuts meant to reduce demand on the grid. ZESCO, the state-owned power company supplying almost all of Zambia’s energy needs, alerted its customers to the load shedding schedule, but these schedules weren’t consistent or reliable, Newlove told ICIJ, making it hard to plan how to maintain — or save — her crops. “One week you’d get a schedule from, say, morning to midday and you’d make a plan based on that,” she said. “Then, without prior notice, it would change.”

She couldn’t run a farm on four hours of electricity. For the first time since she’d started the farm over a decade earlier — a labor of love she launched while working for a social enterprise — she began to wonder if she’d need to shut it down. “Farmers are optimistic people until that is obliterated entirely by reality. …  It’s a mammoth thing to fathom, that you’re going to kill a business that you’ve worked so hard for for so many years,” she said.

Kanangwa Newlove started farming just outside Lusaka in 2012, selling organic produce to local businesses. Image: Micah Reddy / ICIJ

Newlove and other small-business owners across Zambia faced collapse amid a perfect storm in which environmental and economic shocks were exacerbated by the country’s deep-seated financial problems. Zambia — where roughly 60% of the population lives in poverty — is overwhelmingly dependent on hydropower, but a severe drought in 2024 left dams empty and forced ZESCO to ration electricity usage. While Zambia is drought-prone, ZESCO’s financial woes left it uniquely ill-prepared for the drought, the worst in decades.

The company was sinking financially. Among its biggest expenses was a long-term loan of nearly $285 million from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) with tough repayment terms. The loan was signed more than a decade before, in 2011, and in the following years, ZESCO had taken on more and more debt from ICBC and other Chinese lenders. Beholden to Chinese creditors, the power utility mirrored Zambia, one of the world’s most indebted countries and the first in Africa to default on its sovereign debt during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the country’s largest state-owned company, ZESCO was a significant contributor to Zambia’s overall debt.

Now, newly revealed documents show how Chinese lenders, working with Chinese contractors in Zambia, piled loans onto the country and its ailing state-owned enterprises. When it came time for ZESCO to pay, ICBC adopted what analysts see as a hardball stance to recover debt from a struggling borrower.

These documents form part of China Capital, an ICIJ-led investigative collaboration with 23 media partners. Based on a trove of 4.8 million documents, including client dossiers, due diligence reports, loan agreements, meeting minutes and internal emails in English and Chinese, China Capital exposes the inner workings of ICBC’s U.K. subsidiary and London branch, and the crucial role ICBC London has played in advancing Chinese interests in Africa.

China Capital lays bare what experts describe as the bank’s muscular lending tactics, which burdened some of Africa’s most economically vulnerable states — claims the Chinese Embassy in Zambia denied. The project reveals the complex picture of Zambian debt arrangements and the role played by lenders such as ICBC, which presents itself as a commercial bank but acts as a foreign policy tool of the Chinese state, advancing Chinese strategic interests in resource-rich countries like Zambia.

Although China became a vital lender for Zambia and helped the country fill an enormous infrastructure gap, Chinese objectives were not always aligned with Zambia’s best interests. Chinese lenders like ICBC were willing to make onerous and high-risk loans to a country that could not afford them. Meanwhile, Chinese companies seeking infrastructure contracts urged Zambian state entities to take on new debt to fund those projects. Zambia’s government, eager for easily accessible credit to fund its infrastructure plans, needed little encouragement. These factors combined to push Zambia into a disastrous debt spiral in which it was unable to service its debt, followed by years of sluggish recovery.

A Bank of China billboard, left, and a PepsiCo Inc. advertisement stand outside the arrivals area at Kenneth Kaunda International Airport in Lusaka, Zambia, on Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2018. Chinese funding was behind many major infrastructure projects, including parts of the airport. Image: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A $285 million loan

Zambia’s economic outlook was positive in 2011, the year ZESCO signed its $285 million loan agreement with ICBC.

The country had emerged from successful debt relief programs involving the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other international lenders years before. Relatively debt-free, it began to focus on funding new infrastructure projects, such as power lines, highways, stadiums and airports. To do so, it turned to the international financial market. Between 2012 and 2015, Zambia issued three international bonds worth $3 billion to foreign investors chasing high yields in the developing world.

At the same time that Zambia was eagerly courting foreign infrastructure investment, China was rapidly expanding its interests in Africa. In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a strategy to bolster the country’s connectivity with the rest of the world through infrastructure and development. Chinese companies were encouraged to invest abroad, accompanied by a surge in Chinese foreign lending. To poor, landlocked countries like Zambia, China portrayed itself as an alternative to Western funders, untainted by accusations of paternalism and willing to engage developing nations as equals. It offered fewer economic policy conditions on its loans than its Western counterparts, whose legacies were associated with painful economic reforms forced onto indebted African countries.

Chinese investors were also willing to go where others were not. For Western companies, Zambia came with a risk premium that drove up the cost of capital and meant that they would invest only if high returns made up for the perceived risk. Barbara Dutzler, an economist with Germany’s main development agency and head of the agency’s Good Financial Governance in Zambia program, told ICIJ that, with China, there was “an alignment between state and industry” and an overarching geostrategic plan. That meant China could direct investment where it wanted and fund projects that would not hold up in purely commercial terms.

Although it presents itself as a commercial bank, ICBC remains majority state-owned and is driven not only by the profit-maximizing interests of shareholders but also the political prerogatives of the party-state. Documents from China Capital show that ICBC bankers routinely weighed Chinese strategic policies like the Belt and Road Initiative when considering loan decisions around the world.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-capital/china-banking-icbc-oligarchs-sanctions-london/

OVERVIEW Chinese banking giant serves firms linked to oligarchs and autocrats to push Beijing’s agenda Sep 14, 2026

https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-capital/zhang-hongli-icbc-executive-corruption-employee-misconduct/

CORRUPTION ICBC promoted corrupt executive, ignored employee misconduct as it pursued global expansion Sep 14, 2026

https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-capital/huawei-icbc-banking-us-court-beijing-london/

HUAWEI Chinese bank helped Huawei spirit $1B out of London days after US indictment of the tech giant Sep 14, 2026

Recommended reading OVERVIEW Chinese banking giant serves firms linked to oligarchs and autocrats to push Beijing’s agenda Sep 14, 2026 CORRUPTION ICBC promoted corrupt executive, ignored employee misconduct as it pursued global expansion Sep 14, 2026 HUAWEI Chinese bank helped Huawei spirit $1B out of London days after US indictment of the tech giant Sep 14, 2026

This sort of “contractor-facilitated lending” became institutionalized in Zambia, where the government found it convenient to start “outsourcing much of the financing and mobilization process directly to Chinese contractor partnerships,” according to a paper by researcher Tianyi Wu at the Global China Initiative, part of Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center. Besides ICBC, the funds came from an array of Chinese financial institutions that were all too willing to provide high-risk loans. In these transactions, China benefited on both ends — as lender and contractor — while Zambia assumed the repayment obligation and much of the financial risk.

The former Finance Ministry official told ICIJ the ministry was supposed to oversee borrowing, but “a lot went on outside the Ministry of Finance, and they’d find out that ministry X had signed with Y company from China and organized the finance. It was a bit of a free-for-all for a while.”

Researchers at CARI found that among African countries with Chinese loans, Zambia had the highest number of lenders and the second-largest number of Chinese contractors securing Chinese-financed infrastructure projects. “Only Angola, which has borrowed four times as much from Chinese lenders, has more contractors, and even Angola has fewer Chinese lenders,” the researchers found.

Many analysts agree that widespread corruption, patronage and institutional weaknesses helped fuel Zambia’s debt spiral. The country’s bureaucracy lacked capacity to negotiate, evaluate and monitor its high levels of debt, while politicians had perverse incentives to keep accumulating it. The money was easily available for large infrastructure projects from which political elites could derive kickbacks and other illicit gains: “Patronage is part of the political landscape of Zambia,” the former Finance Ministry official said. “People were seeing things like roads being built, a new airport and stadium. Things were getting better in terms of infrastructure but at a very high price because of rent-seeking behavior.”

Chinese banks loan billions to Zambia The debt-ridden African nation has used Chinese money to finance major infrastructure projects, defense contracts and more.

Sources: The China Africa Research Initiative (CARI) at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University and the AidData research center at the College of William & Mary. The CARI data includes 2015-2019 loan commitments to ZESCO and 2000-2020 loan commitments to the Zambian central government.

An IMF report noted both that “large public investment projects were often transformed into vehicles for political patronage and rent seeking opportunities,” and that “embedded governance weaknesses cannot be overestimated in accumulation of sovereign debt and the subsequent crisis.”

Zambia was an increasingly risky prospect, but ICBC continued expanding its interests there. In 2016 and 2017, ICBC committed to finance three other ZESCO electricity supply projects worth over $100 million and, together with the Export-Import Bank of China (known as China Eximbank), was a joint lender in the $1.5 billion syndicated loan for the 750 megawatt Kafue Gorge Lower Hydropower Station, for which ICBC claimed $15 million in management fees from ZESCO. It also signed six additional loans with the central government between 2016 and 2018, committing over $1 billion to a range of projects, from police and defense force housing to the construction of a hospital and an international airport, not all of which were fully implemented. Borrowing “mushroomed during the [Lungu] administration … to the degree they couldn’t even disburse the loans,” said Dutzler — a view backed by findings of Zambia’s auditor general. This led to growing alarm among Zambian opposition politicians and civil society groups over alleged Chinese predatory lending, as well as international headlines warning of “debt-trap diplomacy” — where a creditor country overloads a borrower with debt with the intention of extracting concessions.

Meanwhile, Gerald Soko, the butcher, was still trading on Zambia’s good years and focusing on expanding his business, unaware of an approaching debt cliff and the years of economic strain ahead.

The reserve account was firmly under ICBC’s control. “What this means is a bank doesn’t have to go to a separate bank, to ask for permission to touch the money in the [debt service reserve account]. They’re like, ‘I am the escrow account bank, I can do whatever the hell I want with this money,’ ” said Bradley Parks, executive director of AidData, a research center at the College of William & Mary that has tracked Chinese lending globally.

ICBC’s London branch was pressured to transfer $20 million from a ZESCO reserve account without securing the proper paperwork first, according to confidential bank records. Image: May James/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Later that year, S&P Global again downgraded Zambia “on rising fiscal deficits and debt burden.” In its analysis, it referred to mounting government arrears “to contractors involved in the construction of new roads and to ZESCO … which had to import emergency power to replace a shortfall of hydro-generated power.” It added that “the increase in debt accumulation has also been accompanied by rising debt service payments.” Between 2014 and 2019 the government’s debt to foreign creditors as a percentage of GDP more than quadrupled.

The effects of a severely strained economy soon reached ordinary Zambians. Zambia’s currency, the kwacha, depreciated, inflation rose and high interest rates made borrowing more expensive. “This has affected the ordinary person, this high inflation without GDP growth that can match the cost of living,” said Hambayi, the Zambian financial analyst.

By 2019, ICBC was “reportedly reluctant” to release funds because Zambia began defaulting on payments to other creditors, according to an AidData analysis. In 2020, a ZESCO subsidiary defaulted on its repayment obligations for the $1.5 billion China Eximbank-ICBC hydropower loan. ZESCO — which had guaranteed higher electricity prices from independent power producers than the tariffs it charged its customers — was insolvent. So was the country, after defaulting on its debt that year. Lungu’s government had run out of options and had begun talks to restructure its debt.

Among other measures to recover costs and reduce losses, the government began cutting subsidies, including for fuel, and increasing electricity tariffs. The escalating cost of living weighed heavily on Soko’s butchery business. “People complain about the cost of electricity … and are struggling to make ends meet. They keep asking for meat on credit, the same people who used to spend a lot,” he said, before listing the many neighboring businesses that had closed in recent years: barbers and salons, welders and fast-food franchises.

Zambia’s weakened fiscal position left it extremely vulnerable to the worst drought in four decades, which began in 2023 and led to the relentless power cuts that nearly ended Newlove’s farming business. During the most intense period of cuts, as her crops wilted, she and the farm supervisor scrambled to find a generator and eventually found someone willing to rent them an old one. It sputtered and shook and looked as if it would give out, but it got her through those difficult days. The generator’s high costs ate into her dwindling margins, though, forcing Newlove to use her personal savings to keep the business afloat. “If we didn’t have that reserve of money, we would have sunk,” she told ICIJ.

A crippling drought that began in 2023 wilted crops and led to rolling electricity outages, which made it difficult for Newlove to run pumps for irrigation and pushed her business to the brink of collapse. Image: Micah Reddy / ICIJ

The electricity crisis also dealt a heavy blow to Soko’s butchery, leaving fridgefuls of rotting meat. Customers stopped buying in bulk, worried that they would face the same problem, what Soko called the “trickle-down effects” of load shedding. He said that burglars twice took advantage of the darkness during power cuts to target his shop. To get through the worst of the outages, Soko too had to fork out for a generator he could barely afford to run. Sales from the butchery these days is less than half of what it was before load shedding, and he has had to put all his plans for expanding his business on hold. “There is no profit,” he told ICIJ.

Negotiating the future

After China became the world’s largest source of bilateral official lending to developing countries, it faced a critical test in Zambia: How would it negotiate to restructure an unusually complex mountain of debt? How would it work with other external creditors? As a creditor nation, China has not joined the Paris Club — an informal group of mostly high-income lending countries that coordinates solutions to heavily indebted developing countries — and Chinese creditor loan agreements often contain provisions to exclude them from collective debt-restructuring initiatives. Chinese lenders also had a reputation for taking a hard line and refusing to accept markdowns on their loans, “a core Chinese position,” said Dutzler of Good Financial Governance in Zambia. “They don’t give a haircut.” Among those at the negotiation table, she said, “China was the big unknown.”

The restructuring efforts began on shaky ground, as the negotiating parties — numerous governments and private lenders — went through back-and-forth talks that dragged on for years, hamstringing Zambia’s development and economic recovery.

The true scale of the country’s debt remained hidden, adding to the tension. Researchers at CARI, which had been tracking Chinese lending to Africa for almost a decade, found that “Zambia’s outstanding external debt to all Chinese financiers, official and commercial, was approximately $6.6 billion in August 2021.” This was nearly double the highest figure cited by the Zambian government. Part of the problem stemmed from the structure of the Chinese loans, which were cloaked in confidentiality clauses.

In an email to ICIJ, the Chinese Embassy in Zambia said that claims about opaque lending were “baseless” and that China’s “overseas financing cooperation is fully open and transparent.”

Ultimately, the worst fears of Chinese predatory lending, rumors of China seizing national assets like ZESCO and screaming international headlines about debt-trap diplomacy turned out to be alarmist. China agreed to co-chair Zambia’s official creditors’ committee alongside France, signaling a willingness to work with others rather than go it alone. An important milestone came in 2024, when Zambia reached agreements in principle to restructure debt with Chinese commercial lenders, including ICBC. As of 2026, debt-restructuring negotiations were largely concluded, with most of the talks occurring under the government of Lungu’s rival and successor, Hakainde Hichilema.

Ordinary Zambians still feel the lingering effects of years of intersecting crises that battered the economy and shifted perceptions of China’s role in Zambia. At Soko’s spartan butchery, the long queues of customers have been reduced to a trickle. Turnover is less than half of what it was, he said, leaning against a mostly empty display cabinet. Survey data shows that Zambians have grown increasingly skeptical of China’s role in their country. In 2014, 72% of those polled by Afrobarometer — an independent public opinion research network — viewed China’s economic and political influence positively. By 2022, that figure was down to 42%. China too was burnt by the debt troubles of developing nations; that’s part of the reason it has shifted focus to what it calls a “small and beautiful” approach to infrastructure projects, with smaller loans and shorter repayment windows.

A photo of Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema hangs on the wall of Soko’s butcher shop, which was a thriving business until the country’s electricity crisis hit and the economy stalled. Image: Micah Reddy / ICIJ

Newlove, the farmer, told ICIJ that she feels she has made it out of the crisis intact. Her farm is fully operational, and she avoided laying off any of her 14 full-time staff. They have begun replanting on portions of the land they were forced to abandon. The chickens, goats, rabbits and pigs survived, and she has since crisis-proofed her farm with large solar panels that soak up energy from Zambia’s mostly sunny skies. But on the other side of Newlove’s stone perimeter wall is dry, dusty scrubland — a graveyard for failed farms and a constant reminder of her close brush with disaster. “Our resilience was tested,” she said. “I knew a lot of farmers who shut down or changed business. … They were very lucrative, and I thought, ‘We’re next.’ ”

Contributing reporters: Scilla Alecci, Denise Ajiri, Jelena Cosic and Delphine Reuter (ICIJ)

The guest was Alexandre Ramagem, a Brazilian congressman and spy chief under former President Jair Bolsonaro. In September, Ramagem had fled Brazil days before being sentenced to 16 years in prison for his role in Bolsonaro’s plot to overturn the 2022 election. The message was drafted the same day the country’s Supreme Court ordered Ramagem’s arrest and two days after a Brazilian news site published photos of him and his wife strolling through the Miami complex in workout clothes, causing outrage back home.

The message was written in the name of Rodrigo Martins de Mello, who was convicted of running an illegal mining operation on protected indigenous land in the Amazon. De Mello claimed he had only just learned from the press that his guest was barred from leaving Brazil. “In order to avoid any issues for the condominium or for myself, I hereby request that the condominium IMMEDIATELY notify him of my directive for him to leave my property,” De Mello wrote.

But Brazilian investigators say De Mello and his family knew all along that Ramagem was on the run. Messages, notes and photos from confidential records reviewed by ICIJ and Agência Pública show that they housed Ramagem for months, vouched for him to building management and sought paperwork needed to obtain a Florida driver’s license for him, including a lease drafted to make it look as if he was renting a room.

The records, obtained by Agência Pública and shared with ICIJ, are part of a sealed investigation by Brazil’s Federal Police into Ramagem’s escape, conducted within the Supreme Court’s sprawling investigation into the plot to overturn the 2022 election.

The Federal Police had an officer in Miami working alongside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. With the officer’s help, the confidential records say, ICE found Ramagem, who Brazil wants to extradite, and arrested him in Orlando in April for overstaying his visa.

Then the case took an unexpected turn. After two days, ICE released Ramagem while he pursues asylum. Days after that, the State Department told the Brazilian officer who had helped locate Ramagem to leave the country, accusing him of trying to extend “political witch hunts” to U.S. soil.

There’s a lot of favoritism and discrimination and double standards in the immigration system now. — Tessa Petit, Florida Immigrant Coalition

Six months later, Ramagem remains free in Florida. Officials in Brazil declined to say whether the U.S. has responded to its extradition request.

Ramagem’s treatment stands in sharp contrast with that of thousands of asylum seekers who have been deported since Trump returned to office.

“There’s a lot of favoritism and discrimination and double standards in the immigration system now,” said Tessa Petit, executive director of the advocacy group Florida Immigrant Coalition.

Most immigrants don’t get the break Ramagem got, said Petit, who fled Haiti in 2001 and was initially denied asylum before winning her case in immigration court. “The reality for the majority of people is: Be vigilant, be careful, and hopefully be lucky enough to not get picked up.”

Neither Ramagem nor the De Mellos responded to requests for comment for this story.

In Brazil and in the U.S., supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, a close ally of President Donald Trump, praised the White House for Ramagem’s release.

On Oct. 25, Brazilians will vote in a presidential runoff in which the narrow front-runner, Flavio Bolsonaro, a son of the former leader, has promised pardons for everyone convicted in the coup plot.

Brazilian presidential candidates Flavio Bolsonaro, left, and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attend a presidential debate ahead of the national election in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on October 18, 2026.

‘An illegal alien from Brazil’

Ramagem’s only known run-in with U.S. authorities came after months of living in plain sight in Florida and publicly accusing the Brazilian government of persecution.

Ramagem entered the country legally on Sept. 11, 2025, with permission to stay six months, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, told ICIJ. But he “chose to illegally overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws,” the agency said, calling him, “an illegal alien from Brazil.”

Brazil filed a formal extradition request with the State Department on Dec. 30, 2025, according to Brazil’s Justice Ministry.

On April 13, police detained Ramagem in Orlando during a traffic stop and handed him over to ICE. Two days later, ICE let him go, pending the outcome of his removal proceedings, the agency said. He paid no bail, according to Paulo Figueiredo, a U.S.-based Brazilian commentator and Bolsonaro ally who said his immigration consulting firm has assisted Ramagem. Detained immigrants usually must go before a judge to seek release, but ICIJ found no record of Ramagem petitioning the court for his freedom. ICE told Brazilian police at the time that the release was an administrative decision and that Ramagem could remain free while his asylum claim was reviewed, according to Brazilian media reports citing police sources.

Ramagem’s allies credited Washington for his release. “Thank you, President Trump and everyone in the administration,” Figueiredo wrote on X. Eduardo Bolsonaro, another son of the former president, thanked Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Sóstenes Cavalcante, a leader of Bolsonaro’s party in Brazil’s Congress, said Rubio had helped speed up the release, which he said would otherwise have taken at least two weeks.

RAMAGEM IS FREE AND BACK HOME!

My deepest thanks go to Donald Trump @realDonaldTrump and @SecRubio for their sensitivity and attention in addressing the case of this true national hero, who, even under persecution, has never wavered.

Alexandre Ramagem deserves asylum in the land of freedom, alongside his courageous wife – tireless in fighting for his liberty – and their beautiful daughters.

— Eduardo Bolsonaro (@BolsonaroSP) April 15, 2026

Ramagem himself suggested he had U.S. government support. In November, after the publication of photos showing him in Miami, Brazil’s Supreme Court had ordered his arrest. The next day, in a livestreamed interview, Ramagem said he was safe in the United States “with the consent and knowledge of the American government.”

On April 20, five days after Ramagem’s release from immigration custody, the State Department asked Marcelo Ivo de Carvalho, the Brazilian Federal Police liaison officer posted in Miami to work with ICE, to leave the country. “No foreigner gets to game our immigration system to both circumvent formal extradition requests and extend political witch hunts into U.S. territory,” the department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs wrote on X.

The government in Brasília retaliated and suspended the duties of a U.S. immigration agent posted there, who then left the country on April 22. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said the U.S. had failed to consult Brazil first, as the two countries’ agreement on police liaisons requires, and ignored “good diplomatic practice of dialogue between friendly nations, such as Brazil and the United States, over more than 200 years of relations.”

Neither the State Department nor the White House responded to multiple requests for comment. In its statement, DHS did not explain why Ramagem was released, saying only that he was freed “pending the outcome of his removal proceedings” and “will receive due process.” It added that a pending application “does NOT confer any type of legal status in the United States” and that “illegal aliens are not welcome in our country.”

The handling of Ramagem’s case stands out among those of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers in the United States.

Since Trump returned to office, immigration judges have ordered more than 440,000 asylum seekers removed, more than in the previous eight years combined, according to a recent Washington Post analysis. Release from ICE detention has also become the exception. By late 2025, ICE was deporting more than 14 people directly from detention for every one it released to await a hearing, according to the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group that analyzed ICE data. In December, the administration paused decisions on all  asylum applications pending with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Ramagem’s release was not just an immigration matter. A career federal police officer, he headed Bolsonaro’s security when Bolsonaro was president-elect. He was then appointed head of Brazil’s intelligence agency, becoming part of the inner circle of a president whose prosecution the Trump administration has criticized. In July 2025, Trump imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods, calling Bolsonaro’s trial a “witch hunt,” and his administration sanctioned Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court justice who oversees the coup case against Bolsonaro and Ramagem. A White House executive order that month accused Brazilian officials of politically persecuting the former president.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist who defeated Bolsonaro in the 2022 election, has accused Washington of meddling in Brazil’s affairs. Last month, Lula used his speech at the United Nations General Assembly to warn against foreign interference in the upcoming election there.

Ramagem has denied that Celso helped him. In an Instagram post after the ICE arrest, he said he didn’t know “a certain” Priscila or Celso. “They arrested a young man, a kid, who only met me when I was already in the U.S.,” he said. “In fact, this young man is American.”

Celso now wears an ankle monitor while the investigation, which is under seal, continues.

The confidential records show the De Mello family’s alleged involvement began early. Since June 2025, Ramagem, then a member of Brazil’s Congress, had been barred by court order from leaving Brazil and was required to surrender all his passports while on trial. He was charged with using the country’s intelligence agency to help Bolsonaro discredit its voting system. (Ramagem’s defense told the Supreme Court that the evidence against him was “extremely timid.”)

On Sept. 9, while on medical leave from Congress, he crossed from the northern town of Bonfim into Lethem, Guyana. A photo found on the phone of Priscila Freitas de Mello, then Rodrigo’s wife, shows him there the next day, smiling, at what appears to be an immigration post in Guyana. Brazilian Federal Police investigators say Rodrigo took the picture, according to the records.

On Sept. 11, as Brazil’s Supreme Court convicted him, Ramagem flew to the United States on a diplomatic passport that he had kept.

On Sept. 15, Celso messaged Priscila asking for a utility bill in his father’s name so Ramagem could apply for a Florida driver’s license, the confidential records show.

“Hi Pri, good evening,” Celso wrote to his stepmother. “Can you send me a bill for your apartment in my dad’s name? Water, electricity, phone, internet… We’re going to try to get Alexandre’s driver’s license tomorrow at the DMV.” He had drafted a lease, Celso wrote, to make it look as if Ramagem “had rented the room.”

“Let me see,” Priscila replied.

Two days later, Priscila wrote to the condominium’s management asking for a new gate access card. “Since we are traveling, we won’t be able to pick it up,” she said. “Therefore, we authorize a friend of ours, Alexandre Rodrigues Ramagem, to collect the new card on our behalf.” Celso also contested parking fines Ramagem had run up at the complex, the records show.

On Nov. 17, Ramagem’s spouse and daughters joined him in the apartment, according to the wife’s social media posts.

Investigators in Brazil allege in the confidential records that the De Mello family played a key role in keeping Ramagem hidden, both by housing him and by helping him deceive U.S. authorities with false documents. It is unclear whether a driver’s license was ultimately issued.

Rodrigo, the De Mello patriarch, has denied helping Ramagem escape. In November, he called the escape story a “fallacious narrative” meant to persecute the right, and said that when Ramagem was with him, he faced no conviction or legal impediment to leaving Brazil. The two men appeared together publicly in March 2025, when Rodrigo posted a photo of Ramagem’s visit to Boa Vista, De Mello’s longtime base in the state of Roraima, near the Guyana border, calling him “a great ally” of Bolsonaro.

https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2023/01/how-investigating-political-fanatics-became-one-of-the-most-dangerous-jobs-in-brazil/

MEET THE INVESTIGATORS How investigating political fanatics became one of the most dangerous jobs in Brazil Jan 08, 2023

https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/white-house-pick-to-run-venezuela-oil-deal-under-investigation-in-two-countries/

FINCEN FILES White House pick to run Venezuela oil deal under investigation in two countries Sep 03, 2026

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/04/arizona-gun-shop-owner-is-first-to-face-terrorism-related-charges-after-allegedly-selling-high-caliber-weapons-bound-for-mexican-cartels/

Accountability Arizona gun shop owner faces terrorism-related charges for allegedly selling high-caliber weapons bound for Mexican cartels Apr 30, 2026

Recommended reading MEET THE INVESTIGATORS How investigating political fanatics became one of the most dangerous jobs in Brazil Jan 08, 2023 FINCEN FILES White House pick to run Venezuela oil deal under investigation in two countries Sep 03, 2026 Accountability Arizona gun shop owner faces terrorism-related charges for allegedly selling high-caliber weapons bound for Mexican cartels Apr 30, 2026

The bipartisan Romance Scam Prevention Act, backed by senators Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee (R-Ten) and John Hickenlooper of Colorado (D-Colo), was passed unanimously by the Senate in late September and went to the president for signature earlier this month.

Romance fraud schemes accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic when more seniors turned to dating sites for companionship, followed by scammers. Romance scams incurred record-high losses in 2025, with Federal Trade Commission data showing over 70,000 reports and a staggering $1.47 billion lost in the U.S. Losses also reportedly surged in the U.K., South Korea, Australia and across Africa.

Some dating sites already remove fraudsters’ accounts but a victim may continue talking to a scammer off the app long after a scammer’s profile has been deleted. The Romance Scam Prevention Act aims to close that gap by requiring dating platforms to send a fraud ban notification to anyone who has communicated with someone with a fraudulent account.

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/07/dating-app-scam-models-influencers-social-discovery-group/

Accountability Inside the Matrix: How models, influencers and engagement quotas power the Social Discovery Group’s dating machine and global profits Jul 23, 2026

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/09/tinder-swindlers-plan-for-a-dating-app-sparks-industry-backlash/

Collaborative Journalism ‘Tinder Swindler’s’ plan for a dating app sparks industry backlash Sep 18, 2026

https://www.icij.org/investigations/coin-laundry/crypto-giant-circle-rebuffed-efforts-to-help-scam-victims-police-say/

CRYPTOCURRENCY Crypto giant Circle rebuffed efforts to help scam victims, police say Jul 08, 2026

Recommended reading Accountability Inside the Matrix: How models, influencers and engagement quotas power the Social Discovery Group’s dating machine and global profits Jul 23, 2026 Collaborative Journalism ‘Tinder Swindler’s’ plan for a dating app sparks industry backlash Sep 18, 2026 CRYPTOCURRENCY Crypto giant Circle rebuffed efforts to help scam victims, police say Jul 08, 2026

Throughout a business day, these teams, known in confidential records as “departments,” receive a steady stream of customers, almost always carrying bags of various shapes and sizes.

And inside the bags are piles and piles of cash — Russian rubles. These departments, staffed by payment brokers, are a key intake point for one of the largest, and most secretive, cash-processing operations in the world.

The inside of the sprawling, 160-acre market. Image: Natalia Senatorova / Wikimedia

Welcome to the industrial cash machine that is A7, the payments giant backed by the Russian state.

Between November 2024 and July 2025, A7 processed at least 283 tons of cash rubles, worth more than $14 billion, an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and Russian independent media outlet Proekt has found.

For A7, ICIJ discovered, cash is king, the jet fuel for a firm now under scrutiny as a “shadow banking network” designed to evade Western sanctions at scale, according to U.S. authorities.

On Oct. 1, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned A7 as a “significant transnational criminal organization,” which “utilizes money laundering methodologies to fraudulently move vast sums of money in violation of sanctions and other laws in the jurisdictions in which it operates.”

But while Western governments and banks scramble to trace A7 money flows through the international financial system, ICIJ’s investigation reveals that the origins of the bulk of A7 transmissions are, in fact, untraceable.

According to internal A7 records seen by ICIJ, and people familiar with the matter, a huge portion of A7’s payments do not stem from conventional bank transfers by clients inside Russia, but literally from hundreds of tons of cash rubles.

Leaked internal records allowed ICIJ to identify that a handful of wholesale markets and other businesses around the Russian capital, including Sadovod, where much of the business is done in cash, made up a significant share of the cash A7 processed.

The records show that while the source of the cash is untraceable, its destination is not: Most of the cash is bound not for Western markets, but for China.

A fountain in Sadovod market in southeast Moscow. Image: Nikita Andreev / Wikimedia

A7 did not return ICIJ’s requests for comment.

In public statements, A7 has strongly rejected the U.S. allegations of wrongdoing, saying that it “employs a modern, multi-tiered compliance system” and that it was “established to ensure uninterrupted settlements for the Russian market, which has been subjected to unlawful restrictive measures.”

“All clients undergo screening to identify risks and prevent the servicing of individuals or organizations whose activities violate regulatory requirements,” it continued.

Experts say the fact that cash drives A7 raises the spectre of a money laundering operation limited only by the size of the market and A7’s capacity to physically handle the cash. As such, A7’s cash-based model presents challenges not previously understood both to the conventional banking system and to law enforcement.

“Cash is considered one of the highest risk methods of payment and store of value because it’s anonymous, it can travel across borders, and it doesn’t attach to any specific individual or company,” George Voloshin, an expert at ACAMS, a global training body for anti-financial crime, told ICIJ in an interview.

“The A7 network not only helps Russia circumvent Western sanctions and export controls,” Voloshin continued. The fact that A7 takes massive volumes of cash from Moscow’s wholesale markets suggests that the company “is also likely to facilitate cash-based money laundering by effectively legitimizing potential proceeds of crime,” he said.

Voloshin added that international banks bear an additional burden of tracing payments emanating from A7. “The main risk is that [foreign] intermediary or beneficiary banks become complicit in [a] form of criminal activity that they know nothing about, because they don’t have any visibility into what’s happening in Russia where the money originates from.”

Cash by the ton, bound for China

On its launch in late 2024, A7 touted itself as a sanctions-proof payments system, and has come under increasing scrutiny for its role as one of the Kremlin’s principal channels for laundering billions of dollars worth of payments out of Russia and into the global financial system, via a global network of shell companies, often with accounts at major international banks.

As part of its launch, A7 integrated into its business a hodgepodge of informal payment brokers at Moscow markets, including Sadovod, according to internal A7 records seen by ICIJ.

“For [A7], Sadovod is simply a big client base — a big, aggregated pile of clients,” a person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity due to security concerns, told ICIJ. “And that’s exactly what they go there for: the money and the profit.”

For years, this ecosystem of market brokers converted importers’ cash into conventional bank transfers or crypto, most often bound for China. This informal system was upended by Western sanctions, which barred Russian businesses from the SWIFT system, the international messaging network that allows banks to exchange transactions. The threat of U.S. secondary sanctions — which target entities for doing business with sanctioned states or businesses — made Chinese banks more cautious when dealing with Russia.

The informal cash payment system at Moscow’s wholesale markets “depends on trusted intermediaries, established relationships and confidence that money will arrive,” Ilia Shumanov, managing partner of Russia-focused due diligence firm Tri-Trace Investigations, told ICIJ. “Its international reach can be extensive, while outsiders have limited visibility into the underlying transactions.”

Under A7’s new, supercharged system, a platoon of market brokers takes in the bags of cash brought by vendors and makes an initial count.

The brokers then stuff the rubles into numbered bags to be loaded, along with clients’ payment orders, into vans bound for an A7 processing office elsewhere in the Russian capital, according to leaked internal payment and cash management records.

A review of cash deposit and internal payment records shows that a small army of 50 or so A7 cashiers feeds the cash into a counting system where the amounts are verified; A7 enters the bag number, ruble amount and the client’s payment order into a bespoke payment management system, then trucks the cash on to Promsvyazbank, or PSB, the Russian state defense bank, a co-owner of the company. PSB puts it in a vault and credits A7 accounts. PSB acknowledged ICIJ’s request for comment, but did not provide a response.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-capital/gunvor-publicly-condemned-russias-war-but-continued-to-do-business-with-russian-energy-firms-records-show/

CHINA CAPITAL Gunvor publicly condemned Russia’s war but continued to do business with Russian energy firms, records show  Oct 01, 2026

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/09/trump-administration-gave-firm-with-ties-to-ballroom-donor-the-green-light-to-do-business-with-a-sanctioned-russian-bank/

Accountability Trump administration gave firm with ties to ballroom donor the green light to do business with a sanctioned Russian bank Sep 21, 2026

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/02/hong-kong-firms-feed-european-tech-to-russias-war-in-ukraine-report-says/

SANCTIONS Hong Kong firms feed European tech to Russia’s war in Ukraine, report says Feb 18, 2026

Recommended reading CHINA CAPITAL Gunvor publicly condemned Russia’s war but continued to do business with Russian energy firms, records show  Oct 01, 2026 Accountability Trump administration gave firm with ties to ballroom donor the green light to do business with a sanctioned Russian bank Sep 21, 2026 SANCTIONS Hong Kong firms feed European tech to Russia’s war in Ukraine, report says Feb 18, 2026

The update to the EU’s list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes was made by EU Finance Ministers last week, and comes a decade after Panama dealt with the fallout from the Panama Papers, an investigation led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung into 11.5 million financial and legal records. The investigation exposed how a single Panama-based law firm registered 214,000 shell companies in over 200 countries, enabling companies and people to hide wealth and transactions.

“The Panama Papers revelations exposed weaknesses in the global financial system, with a particular focus on Panama and the lax regulations regarding transparency that were in place there at the time,” said Luis Moreno, an economist with the Global Alliance for Tax Justice and International Taxation Director at Latindadd.

“After the Panama Papers, Panama addressed various recommendations — including those from the OECD regarding tax transparency — which is precisely why it has now been removed from the ‘blacklist,'” Moreno added.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/former-co-owner-of-panama-papers-law-firm-convicted-of-aiding-and-abetting-tax-evasion/

IMPACT Former co-owner of Panama Papers law firm convicted of aiding and abetting tax evasion Apr 24, 2026

https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/swedbank-fined-50-million-by-new-york-authorities-over-panama-papers-revelations/

IMPACT Swedbank fined $50 million by New York authorities over Panama Papers revelations Jul 17, 2026

https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/watch-the-panama-papers-ten-years-of-impact/

VIDEO WATCH: The Panama Papers — ten years of impact Apr 02, 2026

Recommended reading IMPACT Former co-owner of Panama Papers law firm convicted of aiding and abetting tax evasion Apr 24, 2026 IMPACT Swedbank fined $50 million by New York authorities over Panama Papers revelations Jul 17, 2026 VIDEO WATCH: The Panama Papers — ten years of impact Apr 02, 2026

A forensic analysis of corporate records obtained as part of the Cyprus Confidential leak reportedly shows how staff at Deloitte’s Cyprus branch, and its offshoot MeritServus, routinely falsified documents while managing the oligarch’s vast offshore fortune.

Between 1999 and 2013, Abramovich’s associates worked closely with the financial services providers to backdate and rubber-stamp more than 1,000 documents, the investigation found, including as part of an alleged scheme that one leading expert described as “straightforward and blatant” tax evasion.

“What you take away from it is that there are professionals who are prepared to bend and break the rules of their profession and therefore the law,” Andrew Mitchell KC, a financial crime barrister who reviewed the findings, told BBC Panorama. “And it looks that they will stop literally at nothing in terms of creating documents.”

Around 2006,

after Cyprus introduced new corporate disclosure rules,

The revelations from TBIJ and the BBC, alongside the Guardian and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, are the latest from the Cyprus Confidential leak obtained by Paper Trail Media and Distributed Denial of Secrets and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. The leak includes about 450,000 files from Meritservus, a family-run Limassol firm that spun off from Deloitte in 2005.

The Deloitte headquarters in Cyprus. Image: Kostas Pikoulas/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Despite the public split, the firms worked together closely behind closed doors and served as key financial advisors to Abramovich for nearly 20 years, severing ties after he was sanctioned by the United Kingdom and the European Union in response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. ICIJ’s previous reporting on the MeritServus files connected Abramovich to 261 companies and trusts in Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, Jersey and other secrecy jurisdictions.

In response to TBIJ and the BBC’s findings, Abramovich’s lawyers denied their client was aware of unlawful backdating, evaded taxes or misled Cypriot authorities: “If an arrangement was proposed by professional advisers of Deloitte’s standing, it would have been entirely proper for companies linked to our client … to rely on it.”

Deloitte Cyprus said that it “acts in compliance with all applicable laws.”

The vanishing billions

Abramovich made his fortune in the 1990s by buying Russia’s state-owned oil company Sibneft after the fall of the Soviet Union for roughly $250 million. A decade later he sold the company back to the government for billions in profit, which he parlayed into investments in real estate, superyachts, a nearly $1 billion art collection and the Chelsea Football Club.

In 2003, one of Abramovich’s Cypriot companies, Kravin Investments, received a windfall of $3 billion from his sale of Sibneft shares, TBIJ and the BBC reported. Around $2 billion was left accruing interest in Kravin’s bank account — and becoming a tax liability.

View embedded content

Leaked emails show how members of Abramovich’s inner circle, who oversaw his financial affairs from London, agreed on a plan to solve the tax issue with his advisors in Cyprus, including MeritServus founder Demetris Ioannides and Antonis Taliotis, a senior tax advisor at Deloitte Cyprus until earlier this year. In one email, Deloitte advised that “certain changes will have to be made to the accounts (bank account balances, interest income, profit and loss account).”

Ioannides’ lawyers told TBIJ and the BBC that he was unable to respond to requests for comment. Talitotis declined to comment through Deloitte Cyprus.

From 2005, MeritServus began backdating documents to 2003, making it appear as though the $3 billion was transferred out of Kravin’s accounts to another of Abramovich’s companies in the British Virgin Islands instead of sitting untouched for years, the investigation found.

MeritServus reportedly then created a backdated agreement claiming that Kravin had been holding and investing the money on the other company’s behalf and therefore shouldn’t be taxed in Cyprus. To add to the illusion, MeritServus also drafted fake correspondence between the companies as well as other corroborating documents — some reportedly as recently as 2008.

Several experts, including Mitchell, told TBIJ and the BBC that the backdated records were devised to evade taxes.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/cyprus-confidential/chelsea-fc-fined-millions-over-secret-payments-under-abramovich-ownership/

IMPACT Chelsea FC fined millions over secret payments under Abramovich ownership Mar 17, 2026

https://www.icij.org/investigations/cyprus-confidential/uk-mps-push-for-probe-into-russian-billionaires-possible-1b-tax-dodge/

TAX HAVENS UK MPs push for probe into Russian billionaire’s possible $1B tax dodge Feb 05, 2025

https://www.icij.org/investigations/russia-archive/leak-reveals-majority-interest-in-roman-abramovichs-nearly-1-billion-art-collection-was-transferred-to-his-ex-wife-ahead-of-sanctions/

Art Leak reveals majority interest in Roman Abramovich’s nearly $1B art collection was transferred to his ex-wife ahead of sanctions Sep 22, 2023

Recommended reading IMPACT Chelsea FC fined millions over secret payments under Abramovich ownership Mar 17, 2026 TAX HAVENS UK MPs push for probe into Russian billionaire’s possible $1B tax dodge Feb 05, 2025 Art Leak reveals majority interest in Roman Abramovich’s nearly $1B art collection was transferred to his ex-wife ahead of sanctions Sep 22, 2023

Tunisian authorities filed the dissolution request against Al Khatt, a nongovernmental organization that promotes independent journalism and media literacy, in May. The dissolution request was not based on a single claim, and it fit a larger pattern of censorship, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) told ICIJ at the time. The court finally ruled on Monday in Al Khatt’s favor.

“This decision is an encouraging signal, but it cannot mask the persistence of major concerns regarding the environment in which independent media operate,” Oussama Bouagila, director of RSF’s North Africa office, wrote to ICIJ. He condemned in particular authorities’ targeting of the independent news site Nawaat and needless detentions of multiple Tunisian journalists.

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/05/tunisian-authorities-threaten-to-dissolve-the-parent-company-of-icij-partner-inkyfada/

PRESS FREEDOM Tunisian authorities threaten to dissolve the parent company of ICIJ partner Inkyfada May 07, 2026

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/09/icij-journalist-micah-reddy-freed-after-4-days-in-secretive-djibouti-custody/

PRESS FREEDOM ICIJ journalist Micah Reddy freed after 4 days in secretive Djibouti custody Sep 22, 2026

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/09/jury-acquits-maltese-business-tycoon-in-the-murder-of-daphne-caruana-galizia/

PRESS FREEDOM Jury acquits Maltese business tycoon in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia Sep 02, 2026

Recommended reading PRESS FREEDOM Tunisian authorities threaten to dissolve the parent company of ICIJ partner Inkyfada May 07, 2026 PRESS FREEDOM ICIJ journalist Micah Reddy freed after 4 days in secretive Djibouti custody Sep 22, 2026 PRESS FREEDOM Jury acquits Maltese business tycoon in the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia Sep 02, 2026

“When tenants have complaints or need to sue their landlord for repairs, it’s always a mystery who’s really the owner,” Rénique-Poole, who works for nonprofit housing organization Southside United HDFC, commonly known as Los Sures, recently told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. “Most of the rent-stabilized buildings in New York that we work with are owned by LLCs, which means that a lot of times tenants don’t know who their landlord is.”

Limited liability companies, or LLCs, are a popular U.S. business structure that shields owners from personal liability and lets them stay anonymous. Los Sures wasn’t alone in wanting that to change. Other tenant advocates, local unions, anti-corruption groups and district attorneys rallied behind the bill, known as the LLC Transparency Act.

We have a justice system that has been so manipulated that you could actually own a bad-acting business and not have any way of seeing any kind of accountability.

—New York state lawmaker Emily Gallagher

Hidden ownership, they said, let landlords dodge accountability for neglected buildings, contractors evade wage-theft judgments and money launderers park cash in luxury real estate. At the bill’s heart was a public, searchable database that would show the names of the real people behind LLCs.

However, by the time the law took effect in January 2026, it had been stripped of the public database and, like its federal counterpart, no longer applied to most of the companies advocates had hoped to unmask.

“It hasn’t made that much of a difference,” said Rénique-Poole, who for a decade has helped tenants in about 30 buildings fight for basics like gas, hot water and heat in winter.

New York’s law was one of many reforms proposed or revived in the wake of the Pandora Papers, ICIJ’s 2021 investigation that showed how world leaders and the ultra-rich used secrecy havens from the British Virgin Islands to South Dakota to hide their wealth. Much of what the leaked files revealed was legal: a global industry of lawyers and advisers built anonymous companies and trusts, permitted by laws of the U.S. and other nations, to shield the assets of the rich and powerful from public scrutiny and, sometimes, from tax authorities and creditors. Governments from Washington to Canberra promised change.

Five years after the publication, ICIJ reviewed what became of some of those promises. A handful became law. Many more stalled, were watered down or dropped. And in the United States, much of what was won has been rolled back.

Big promises with mixed results

Several countries promised registries of company owners similar to the one New York lawmakers set out to build for LLCs. In Chile, where the Pandora Papers named then-President Sebastián Piñera, plans for a public registry gained momentum. Piñera’s successor, Gabriel Boric, sent a bill to Congress in 2023; it has stalled in the Senate since. Panama tightened its registry law with steeper fines, but only authorities have access to it.

In Switzerland, where the Pandora Papers exposed the role the Swiss wealth management industry played in setting up offshore companies, a first federal register of company owners took effect this month, along with new checks on wealth advisers. It, too, is closed to the public. In the European Union, the bloc’s top court shut public access to company ownership registries in 2022, citing privacy, even as the European Parliament called for greater transparency in response to the leak.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/political-and-business-links-to-pandora-papers-roil-parliaments-anti-corruption-and-tax-authorities-as-global-fallout-swells/

IMPACT Political and business links to Pandora Papers roil parliaments, anti-corruption and tax authorities as global fallout swells Oct 12, 2021

https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/global-investigation-tax-havens-offshore/

GLOBAL OVERVIEW Offshore havens and hidden riches of world leaders and billionaires exposed in unprecedented leak Oct 03, 2021

https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2025/03/treasury-department-wont-enforce-beneficial-ownership-rule-under-the-corporate-transparency-act/

CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY Treasury Department won’t enforce beneficial ownership rule under the Corporate Transparency Act Mar 05, 2025

Recommended reading IMPACT Political and business links to Pandora Papers roil parliaments, anti-corruption and tax authorities as global fallout swells Oct 12, 2021 GLOBAL OVERVIEW Offshore havens and hidden riches of world leaders and billionaires exposed in unprecedented leak Oct 03, 2021 CORPORATE TRANSPARENCY Treasury Department won’t enforce beneficial ownership rule under the Corporate Transparency Act Mar 05, 2025

“She made a shell of a bill about shells,” Gallagher told ICIJ.

Hochul, who is running for re-election in November, did not answer ICIJ’s questions. Instead, her office forwarded her veto memo. The New York Department of State, which runs the database, did not respond to a request for comment.

So far, little has changed for advocates of Los Sures. The vast majority of the anonymous companies behind the buildings it works with were formed in the U.S., Rénique-Poole said, so the law doesn’t reach them. And even when officials know who a landlord is, she said, tenants are often left in the dark. “They don’t share it with us.”

Gallagher said tenants still ask her when they’ll be able to look up who owns their buildings. She tells them they can’t. “I’m never going to give up on this,” she said. “Sometimes you think that you’ve won, but you’ve only won the first battle.”

A landmark law, rolled back

The Corporate Transparency Act became law at the last possible moment. Lawmakers had tucked it into a must-pass defense spending bill. Trump vetoed the bill, but Congress overrode him on New Year’s Day 2021, just two days before a new Congress was sworn in. Nine months later, the Pandora Papers revelations made clear the reform was urgent, anti-corruption advocates said, as they pressed the Treasury to put the law into effect.

Erica Hanichak, who like many other advocates has spent years pushing for corporate transparency, counts the law’s passage among the best moments of her career.

“It proved to me that democracy worked and that our voices mattered in Congress,” said Hanichak, co-director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition.

The Pandora Papers revealed that secrecy wasn’t only something the U.S. policed elsewhere. It was something it offered. ICIJ identified 206 U.S. trusts holding more than $1 billion in assets, many in South Dakota, nearly 30 of them linked to people or companies accused of fraud, bribery or human rights abuses. Yet the Corporate Transparency Act largely left such trusts untouched, and the ENABLERS Act, which would have required trust companies to vet their clients, then died in the Senate.

“The United States was very keen to receive information from other countries but refused to send information back,” Ryding said. “And when you behave like that, you become a perfect place to hide your money.”

Four years after its passage, Hanichak watched Trump’s second administration take the CTA apart. In March 2025, just as millions of companies were filing, the Department of the Treasury exempted more than 99% of those required to report. This August, it made the change permanent and said it would delete the information it had already collected on U.S. owners. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called it “a victory for common sense and American small businesses.”

Zorka Milin, co-director of the FACT Coalition, argues the rollback is unlawful.

“They basically repealed it,” she said, “but only Congress can repeal laws under our Constitution.” A future administration, she said, could restore the reporting requirements for U.S. companies.

Meanwhile, Hanichak said, other countries are forging ahead with certain transparency measures. “The U.S., despite being the largest economy in the world… is lagging behind,” she said, noting that more than 130 countries have ownership disclosure rules in place or in the works.

Australia is one. Since July, more than 80,000 lawyers, accountants, real estate agents and other businesses have been required to check who their clients are and report suspicious money, a reform first promised nearly two decades ago.

Confidential documents show that since at least 2022 the rail giant V-Híd Zrt. and other Mészáros Group construction firms transferred billions of forints, amounting to almost $13.5 million, to the Megafon Center, an organization that trained Orbán-friendly social media influencers.

Megafon was founded in 2020 to enlist “professional Facebook warriors” to spread conservative ideas, according to the independent media outlet Telex, which found that the organization later outspent both Fidesz and the Hungarian government on political advertising on the platform. Despite its advertising costs approaching $6 million in 2024, Megafon has never disclosed its donors and has claimed to receive no public funding.

Now, Direkt36 has identified payments from Mészáros firms to the organization over several years, accounting for an estimated third of its revenue in that period. The internal records obtained by Direkt36 and analyzed using ICIJ’s research platform Datashare contain previously undisclosed details about V-Híd’s operations.

The findings, which are part of the Mészáros Files investigation, are based on documents including donation agreements and receipts that show a nearly $1 million contribution by V-Híd to Megafon as early as 2022. A list of expenditures shows another Mészáros firm reportedly provided almost $300,000 to Megafon shortly before Hungary’s April 2022 parliamentary elections.

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/05/us-bars-executives-of-costa-ricas-leading-newspaper-la-nacion-from-entry/

PRESS FREEDOM US bars executives of Costa Rica’s leading newspaper La Nación from entry May 06, 2026

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/05/tunisian-authorities-threaten-to-dissolve-the-parent-company-of-icij-partner-inkyfada/

PRESS FREEDOM Tunisian authorities threaten to dissolve the parent company of ICIJ partner Inkyfada May 07, 2026

https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2018/05/heart-hungarys-battle-democracy-journalism/

PRESS FREEDOM At the heart of Hungary’s battle for democracy: journalism May 07, 2018

Recommended reading PRESS FREEDOM US bars executives of Costa Rica’s leading newspaper La Nación from entry May 06, 2026 PRESS FREEDOM Tunisian authorities threaten to dissolve the parent company of ICIJ partner Inkyfada May 07, 2026 PRESS FREEDOM At the heart of Hungary’s battle for democracy: journalism May 07, 2018

The large number of purchases in such a short period had triggered a federal reporting requirement intended to alert the government to potential firearms trafficking, he wrote, and he wanted to know “if we should stop any future sales” to the person.

The sales continued. Over the next two months, the same man, Jerome Horton, bought an additional 11 guns at various stores operated by the company, a Wisconsin-based retail chain named Fleet Farm. Several of the guns were subsequently found at crime scenes or in the possession of convicted criminals, court documents show. One of them was recovered in connection with a shooting that injured 14 and killed one woman, Marquisha Wiley.

Similar cases have occurred countless times across the United States, where gun laws allow dealers to sell guns in bulk to traffickers with few consequences. The details of those sales and internal discussions about them are usually shrouded in mystery.

But newly released documents reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists shed light on firearm industry practices that experts say contribute to gun trafficking in the United States and abroad.

Earlier this year, Fleet Farm settled the case, paying the state $1 million and agreeing to make improvements to its firearms sales procedures. As part of the settlement, the company agreed to release to the public internal documents revealed during the suit, as well as depositions of its employees and other materials that, taken together, provide a rare look into the inner workings of a large gun retailer. The company denies any wrongdoing. It did not respond to several requests for comment.

The documents have been archived at University of California San Francisco and integrated into a larger collection of documents from litigation related to tobacco, opioids and other industries that impact public health.

The sale of multiple firearms to a single person is not, in and of itself, a sign of wrongdoing by the seller or buyer. There are no federal limits on the number of guns any one adult can buy as long as the buyer does not belong to certain classes of people, such as convicted criminals, who are banned from possessing firearms altogether.

But there are some behaviors that, taken together, are considered “red flags” for straw purchasing — buying a gun on behalf of someone else. Traffickers and other criminals often employ “straw purchasers” with clean records to obtain guns for them. The practice is illegal. The ATF tells dealers to be on the lookout for, among other things, people who purchase several guns over a short period, buy multiples of the same model or plunk down large amounts of cash for the weapons.

It is also illegal to knowingly sell a gun to a straw purchaser. Sellers who have reasonable cause to believe that a sale violates the law are required to decline it.

https://www.icij.org/news/2025/11/ar-15-ammunition-at-a-crime-scene-good-odds-this-us-army-plant-made-it/

United States AR-15 ammunition at a crime scene? Good odds this US Army plant made it. Nov 06, 2025

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/04/arizona-gun-shop-owner-is-first-to-face-terrorism-related-charges-after-allegedly-selling-high-caliber-weapons-bound-for-mexican-cartels/

Accountability Arizona gun shop owner faces terrorism-related charges for allegedly selling high-caliber weapons bound for Mexican cartels Apr 30, 2026

https://www.icij.org/news/2026/02/nearly-half-of-powerful-50-caliber-ammo-seized-by-mexican-government-came-from-us-army-plant-defense-minister-says/

IMPACT Nearly half of powerful .50-caliber ammo seized by Mexican government came from US Army plant, defense minister says Feb 10, 2026

Recommended reading United States AR-15 ammunition at a crime scene? Good odds this US Army plant made it. Nov 06, 2025 Accountability Arizona gun shop owner faces terrorism-related charges for allegedly selling high-caliber weapons bound for Mexican cartels Apr 30, 2026 IMPACT Nearly half of powerful .50-caliber ammo seized by Mexican government came from US Army plant, defense minister says Feb 10, 2026