On Monday, the White House announced details of a new deal with interim President Delcy Rodríguez giving the U.S. majority control over 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil. The deal comes after the January U.S. military seizure of former President Nicolás Maduro, who is currently jailed in New York.

Venezuela’s interim authorities granted North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a privately held company and the second-largest private Venezuelan oil producer, 100-year concessions – the permits that allow for the exploration and production of crude – for 17 oil fields, according to the press release. The deal guarantees the U.S. access to 20% of the crude with right of first refusal to buy the remaining 80%.

Alejandro Betancourt is actively under investigation in Switzerland and Spain. Image: Alejandro Betancourt

Betancourt, a Venezuelan who attended Boston’s Suffolk University, is a majority shareholder in NABEP, according to ICIJ partner El País. In 2018, the businessman was also under investigation in the U.S. for theft of more than $1 billion from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, though no charges were ever filed.

As recently as May, Betancourt was living in the United Kingdom and fighting a Swiss extradition request over an investigation into alleged money laundering, the Financial Times reported. At the same time, authorities in Spain were also investigating his company Derwick Associates.

In 2020, BuzzFeed News’ and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ FinCEN Files investigation revealed how Betancourt and several other young Venezuelan businessmen known for their ties to the government moved vast sums of public money, including funds intended for housing and other basic services, out of the struggling Latin American country. The reporting was based on a leak of thousands of suspicious activity reports filed by banks to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

In its statement about its new oil venture with Venuezela, the White House did not mention Betancourt as the owner of NABEP, nor did it make any mention of the businessman’s current and past investigations.

Yorgen Fenech, the heir to a multimillion-euro property empire, was cleared Wednesday after a Maltese jury returned an 8-1 verdict in his favor. The prosecution is expected to appeal the verdict.

Indicted in 2019, Fenech faced charges of complicity and criminal association to commit murder.

The trial

“We are beyond outraged,” Pavol Szalai, director of the Prague bureau of Reporters Without Borders, wrote in a statement. “The verdict means that almost nine years since the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese authorities have failed to identify and convict the mastermind.”

Caruana Galizia was killed in October 2017 when a bomb placed in her car was detonated remotely. She had been working on stories based on the Panama Papers, including an investigation into alleged links between offshore business deals and Maltese politicians. At the time of her death, she was investigating a controversial power station deal involving Fenech.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/malta-responsible-for-assassination-of-journalist-daphne-caruana-galizia-inquiry-finds/

PRESS FREEDOM Malta responsible for assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, inquiry finds Jul 30, 2021

https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2022/10/two-brothers-convicted-of-murdering-daphne-caruana-galizia-sentenced-to-40-years-in-prison/

PRESS FREEDOM Two brothers convicted of murdering Daphne Caruana Galizia, sentenced to 40 years in prison Oct 16, 2022

https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/it-is-still-dangerous-to-be-a-journalist-daphne-caruana-galizias-son-reflects-on-her-life-and-legacy/

PRESS FREEDOM ‘It is still dangerous to be a journalist’: Daphne Caruana Galizia’s son reflects on her life and legacy Jan 12, 2024

Recommended reading PRESS FREEDOM Malta responsible for assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, inquiry finds Jul 30, 2021 PRESS FREEDOM Two brothers convicted of murdering Daphne Caruana Galizia, sentenced to 40 years in prison Oct 16, 2022 PRESS FREEDOM ‘It is still dangerous to be a journalist’: Daphne Caruana Galizia’s son reflects on her life and legacy Jan 12, 2024

In 2013, Daki’s oncologist told her she needed a mastectomy, chemotherapy and Herceptin, a cancer drug produced by the Swiss company Roche, to improve her chances of survival. But because of the cost, she couldn’t afford the medication.

As Malgas explained, the two became “sisters” in a campaign against the high cost of cancer medicines. Their yearslong fight brought together various nonprofit advocacy groups that ramped up pressure on the government and Roche to reform patent laws. They picketed outside Roche’s Johannesburg office, demanding the company drop the price of Herceptin, which by 2016 cost around $36,000 for a year’s supply, about four times South Africa’s average household income.

Daki’s cancer eventually spread to her spine, and the 49-year-old health club receptionist died at home in November 2016. Malgas left court early that day to see her friend. “But I was 30 minutes late,” she said.

Daki’s death inspired Malgas and other activists to continue pushing for equitable medical treatment and healthcare justice. Their campaign triggered a government probe into alleged excessive pricing of Herceptin.

“Our slogan was: My cancer, your profit,” said Malgas, whose own cancer returned in the midst of their campaign. “We learned of greed from Roche.” But she said their struggle went beyond Roche.

Babalwa Malgas, left, and Tobeka Daki, right, became “sisters” in a campaign to fight for more affordable access to cancer drugs. Image: Supplied; Treatment Action Campaign

For many decades, companies making cancer drugs have exploited ethically dubious practices that have generated great fortunes for shareholders but sometimes priced out patients who desperately need the medicines. Now a review of enforcement actions around the world by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists highlights yet another manifestation of a broken global healthcare system: Some cancer drugmakers face allegations of wrongdoing — again and again — and are not deterred when they have to pay fines or large settlement payments.

Further adding to the industry’s generally wretched reputation, cancer drugmakers have sometimes crossed the line with such documented practices as exploiting the patent system to stifle competition, promoting higher dosages than necessary, taking advantage of industry regulatory shortcuts, and breaching criminal or civil statutes. That’s yet another fallout that can affect patients and raise the expenses of taxpayers and healthcare systems.

This story is a follow-up to ICIJ’s Cancer Calculus investigation, which documented how Merck & Co. kept the price of its blockbuster cancer drug Keytruda high, straining healthcare systems around the world and delaying cheaper versions of the drug from reaching hundreds of thousands of cancer patients in the coming years.

To examine enforcement actions in the cancer drug industry, ICIJ reviewed criminal and civil cases in 31 countries. ICIJ relied on public information and a variety of datasets collated by the nonprofit accountability groups Public Citizen and Good Jobs First, as well as a collection of global anti-competition cases compiled by Brazilian researcher Pedro Gomes Lacerda and Sao Paulo-based lawyer Luiz A. Azevedo de Almeida Hoffmann.

Among the highlights of this review, in the past decade, authorities in seven countries have accused Roche of misleading doctors about a cancer medicine and colluding with another drugmaker. The company paid $14 million to settle charges in Romania that it thwarted competition to three cancer drugs, including Herceptin. An antitrust case in Belgium and the  South Africa case of alleged excessive pricing are underway.

For its part, the drug giant Novartis agreed to pay more than $51 million to the U.S. Justice Department in 2020 to resolve kickback allegations regarding the kidney cancer drug Afinitor and another medicine, and pledged to reform its business practices — the third time it had made that promise.

What these companies are doing … they’re basically paying a fee for the license to break the law. — attorney Reuben Guttman

And Celgene Corp., now controlled by Bristol Myers Squibb, paid $280 million to U.S. and state governments in 2017 to settle allegations that it had improperly promoted the medicines Revlimid and Thalomid to treat multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, and a range of other cancers beyond the uses then approved by the Food and Drug Administration. That was one of the largest settlements ever related to a cancer drug. It was the first for Celgene, but not for Bristol Myers, which acquired Celgene in 2019. And for Bristol Myers, it wouldn’t be the last. The New Jersey manufacturer paid $55 million in a multi-state settlement of anti-competition charges relating to a cancer drug in 2003; in 2024 it paid $2.7 million to settle anti-competition charges in Israel concerning yet another multiple myeloma drug.

“What these companies are doing … they’re basically paying a fee for the license to break the law,” said Reuben Guttman, an attorney for the whistleblower whose disclosures led to the $280 million Revlimid settlement.

Bristol Myers did not respond to requests for comment, but its Celgene unit previously denied wrongdoing. Roche has strongly denied it abused its market dominance and called its practices proper and legal. The company declined to comment on ongoing enforcement matters. Novartis said it is committed to operating with integrity and in compliance with laws and regulations.

In all, ICIJ’s analysis of enforcement actions found that between 2010 and 2025, 12 makers of cancer drugs settled 25 cases with authorities in 10 countries. Eleven of those companies paid fines or made settlements totaling nearly $1.7 billion. The alleged violations ranged from deceptive marketing and kickbacks to illegal tactics to block competition and keep prices high.

These payments and fines to settle allegations of wrongdoing barely dent the companies’ revenues, representing just one-third of 1% of the nearly $696 billion the firms accrued in the years the deals were made.

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Reshma Ramachandran, an assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine, has studied kickbacks in the pharmaceutical industry. She said the settlements are “effectively a slap on the wrist that the companies largely ignore.”

“As they amount to just a fraction of their revenues, there’s little incentive for the companies to change behaviors,” she said. “They just account for this as the cost of doing business, regardless of the harms it brings to patients.”

The cancer drug-related settlements reviewed by ICIJ are only a small part of the overall cases these companies resolved. Eleven of the 12 firms accumulated $15.4 billion in total healthcare fines and settlements from 2010 to 2025, according to data gathered by Good Jobs First. The drugmakers posted more than $491 billion in revenues just in their latest fiscal year.

The haze of settlements and fines leaves cancer survivors like Babalwa Malgas of South Africa and Beth Kitchin of Birmingham, Ala., reeling from the consequences.

Beth Kitchin was diagnosed with leukemia in 2021. Image: Supplied

Kitchin, 62, a retired professor of nutrition, loved to jog and hike, practiced yoga and was healthy until an MRI in 2021 revealed tumors in her legs that turned out to be a type of leukemia. She received a stem cell transplant, but when it led to a serious side effect — donor cells began attacking healthy cells — her doctors prescribed a costly medicine called Jakafi.

During an interview, she held up a bottle of “teeny, tiny” pills. “That’s like a  $300 pill right there,” she said. “It’s a game.” Although her insurance covered most of the cost, Kitchin said she had substantial out-of-pocket expenses.

Incyte Corp., the Delaware-based maker of Jakafi, agreed in 2021 to pay $12.6 million to resolve Justice Department allegations that it paid kickbacks to a charitable foundation to increase prescriptions of Jakafi by covering the copays of patients who were ineligible for the drug. Incyte did not return requests for comment but previously denied wrongdoing. Kitchin said she was unaware that the medicine had been subject to an alleged violation until talking to ICIJ.

With their medical breakthroughs and lifesaving treatments, pharmaceutical companies have brought hope to many. But the frequent rule breaking and illegal conduct show a troubling glimpse of what healthcare has become. As cancer rates climb throughout the world, the giants of an industry poised to save lives have become increasingly, if not untouchable, unstoppable in putting profits before patients.

In a few cases, authorities overturned or reduced penalties, or companies paid no fine at all. Merck, for example, avoided a fine in Austria after allegations that the company engaged in anti-competitive behavior relating to a brain cancer drug. Fifteen years earlier, Schering-Plough Corp., which Merck later acquired, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to settle a U.S. case citing the same drug.

Rick Claypool, research director at Public Citizen, a nonprofit watchdog group, said “apparent repeat offenses” by the largest pharmaceutical companies are evidence of weak enforcement. “We see this pattern again and again,” Claypool said. “If corporations don’t face consequences for violating the law — or if the consequences are costs that are easily absorbed — then corporations will prioritize profits over following the law.”

In 2022, a separate ICIJ investigation found that the growing global scale of corporate leniency agreements allowed large companies in virtually all industries to avoid serious punishment for criminal and civil violations. Settlements known in the U.S. as deferred prosecution agreements and non-prosecution agreements often resulted in repeat offenses and rarely involved punishment of senior executives.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/cancer-calculus/merck-keytruda-cancer-drug-price/

OVERVIEW How Merck turned its wonder drug into a blockbuster — and priced out cancer patients worldwide Apr 13, 2026

https://www.icij.org/investigations/cancer-calculus/unacceptable-lawmakers-react-to-revelations-from-icijs-cancer-calculus-investigation/

IMPACT ‘Unacceptable’: Lawmakers react to revelations from ICIJ’s Cancer Calculus investigation Apr 23, 2026

https://www.icij.org/investigations/ericsson-list/as-us-style-corporate-leniency-deals-for-bribery-and-corruption-go-global-repeat-offenders-are-on-the-rise/

ACCOUNTABILITY As US-style corporate leniency deals for bribery and corruption go global, repeat offenders are on the rise  Dec 13, 2022

Recommended reading OVERVIEW How Merck turned its wonder drug into a blockbuster — and priced out cancer patients worldwide Apr 13, 2026 IMPACT ‘Unacceptable’: Lawmakers react to revelations from ICIJ’s Cancer Calculus investigation Apr 23, 2026 ACCOUNTABILITY As US-style corporate leniency deals for bribery and corruption go global, repeat offenders are on the rise  Dec 13, 2022

Thalomid, or thalidomide, was one of the drugs at the heart of a $280 million settlement paid by Celgene. Image: Science Museum Group Collection (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

In the Celgene case, attorney Guttman and his whistleblower client, Beverly Brown, took on the blockbuster cancer drug Revlimid, now used to treat multiple myeloma. Revlimid is closely related to Thalomid, the brand name for generic thalidomide, which was linked to birth defects nearly 70 years ago. In her court complaint, Brown said managers trained her to promote Revlimid and Thalomid for cancers they weren’t approved to treat — even if they exposed patients to severe side effects, including potentially fatal hemorrhages.

The Justice Department declined to intervene in her case in late 2013, but Brown and her attorneys ultimately won the $280 million settlement: $259 million to be paid to the U.S. government and $20.7 million to state and local governments. Brown received $78 million, according to the law firms representing her.

With annual sales of $8.2 billion in 2017, Revlimid totaled nearly two-thirds of Celgene’s $13 billion in revenue that year, when it reached the settlement.

And it remained a commercial blockbuster for several years as Celgene and Bristol Myers Squibb, after it acquired the company in 2019, repeatedly pushed up the sticker price to about $900 per pill by mid-2024, according to data from Patients for Affordable Drugs, a nonprofit advocacy group. Both companies also struck deals capping the market share of lower-cost generics. All the while Bristol Myers continued to agree to hundreds of millions in payments to settle charges of healthcare wrongdoing.

Roche’s headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. Image: Roche

Prosecutors in the U.S. had already signed a deal with a Roche subsidiary and another drugmaker for $67 million to resolve allegations that the Roche company misled doctors about the effectiveness of Tarceva. That settlement was pocket change for the two parent companies, amounting to roughly 0.1% of their $65 billion in revenues in 2016.

Roche repeatedly denied wrongdoing, and a court overturned a Roche cancer drug fine in Uruguay. Currently regulators in Belgium are considering whether the Swiss firm used illegal strategies to delay biosimilar competition to Herceptin and another medicine. In South Africa, the Competition Commission has asked a tribunal to impose a maximum penalty against Roche for “alleged harmful and life-denying pricing conduct.”

As Babalwa Malgas, the activist who fought for lower drug prices, waits for the tribunal’s ruling, she faces possible cancer for a third time. Recently she checked into a hydrotherapy clinic in Johannesburg for a 10-day treatment, including colon cleansing to help ease back pain that radiates down her legs. “I can move with ease, lift my arm and sleep on all sides,” she told ICIJ, adding she feels “much, much better.”

A Schering-Plough attorney denied that the company ever lied to physicians when it gave them peer-reviewed articles about unapproved uses for the drugs. But U.S. District Judge Patti Saris, noting that several pharmaceutical companies had been fined for illegal marketing, took the entire industry to task. “You cannot thumb your nose at the FDA. … At the end of the day, you can’t market off-label,” Saris said. “It’s wrong.”

At the time, the Schering-Plough settlement was one of the Justice Department’s larger healthcare agreements — and the third multimillion-dollar government settlement in five years for Schering-Plough.

Five years later, Merck pleaded guilty to a criminal misdemeanor charge for unlawfully promoting the arthritis painkiller Vioxx while agreeing to resolve civil allegations of making misleading statements. Merck pulled the drug off the market in 2004 after scientists linked it to an increased chance of heart attacks and strokes. Merck paid $950 million to settle the criminal and civil allegations — tacked on to a $4.85 billion payout earlier to resolve thousands of private personal injury lawsuits related to Vioxx.

Merck’s New Jersey headquarters. Image: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Merck declined to comment for this story. The company has also been the target of public and media scrutiny in the U.S., Austria, India and other countries because of the high pricing and market dominance of Keytruda, the world’s bestselling drug. Politicians and journalists escalated an effort in Austria to get healthcare officials to explain how the prices of Keytruda are determined.

In June, U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., wrote to Merck CEO Rob Davis seeking information about how Keytruda’s dense web of overlapping patents — more than 1,200 applications across 53 countries, regions and territories — could artificially inflate prices past the original 2028 patent expiration date. Hassan’s letter cited ICIJ’s Cancer Calculus investigation.

So where does the money go if a pharmaceutical company has to pay to settle allegations of wrongdoing? It can be hard to track, but usually the funds go to government treasuries, including states and counties in the U.S., depending on the type of settlement deal, and public health programs, harmed communities, whistleblowers and lawyers. But, wondered Rebecca Hall, the cancer survivor from California, “Can you imagine if all of the settlement money had been put into a fund that was to benefit patients who couldn’t afford their medications? That would change the game.”

Contributors: Jiyoon Kim (Newstapa/KCIJ); Stefan Melichar (profil); Guillermo Draper (Búsqueda); Anonna Duff (Indian Express); Micah Reddy, Delphine Reuter, David Rowell, Richard H.P. Sia, Pierre Romera Zhang (ICIJ)

It’s a story that repeats itself across Tether’s customer base. Tether’s USDT token, whose value is pegged 1-to-1 to the U.S. dollar, has become one of the most widely used types of cryptocurrency in illicit finance. But the 12-year-old company has long claimed that it does thorough due diligence on its primary customers — that is, the people and institutions who purchase USDT directly from Tether, rather than from secondary sources once the tokens are in general circulation. In a 2023 letter, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino assured members of Congress that the company uses vetting practices that “you would see at sophisticated financial institutions,” such as reviewing customers’ sources of funds, sanctions lists and any other information that links them to illicit activity.

A set of Tether documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists suggests otherwise. The documents show who was buying USDT tokens from Tether during 2019 and 2020 — a key period of growth for the company, when its tokens in circulation rose from less than $2 billion to more than $20 billion.

Although several years old, the records give a rare look into exactly who was buying USDT from Tether. Among them were some possibly concerning clients. These included hundreds of millions of dollars in purchases by shell companies based in the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, the Seychelles and Hong Kong. More significantly, ICIJ identified several actors later revealed to be involved with financial crimes who together bought tens of millions of tokens directly from Tether. Among them were firms later named as laundering vehicles for North Korean hackers and for the Sinaloa Cartel, which smuggles vast amounts of heroin and fentanyl into the United States.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/coin-laundry/cryptocurrency-giant-tether-is-wildly-profitable-can-it-do-more-to-stop-financial-crime/

CRYPTOCURRENCY Cryptocurrency giant Tether is wildly profitable. Can it do more to stop financial crime? Dec 01, 2025

https://www.icij.org/investigations/coin-laundry/the-200-billion-company-you-cant-look-inside/

CRYPTOCURRENCY The $200 billion company you can’t look inside Aug 07, 2026

https://www.icij.org/investigations/coin-laundry/cryptocurrency-exchanges-binance-okx-money-laundering-crime/

CRYPTOCURRENCY Crypto giants moved billions linked to money launderers, drug traffickers and North Korean hackers Nov 17, 2025

Recommended reading CRYPTOCURRENCY Cryptocurrency giant Tether is wildly profitable. Can it do more to stop financial crime? Dec 01, 2025 CRYPTOCURRENCY The $200 billion company you can’t look inside Aug 07, 2026 CRYPTOCURRENCY Crypto giants moved billions linked to money launderers, drug traffickers and North Korean hackers Nov 17, 2025

Contact us Do you have more information? Send us a tip. Email the reporter

A company owned by Zhao Dong, a Chinese crypto trader and Bitfinex shareholder, received approximately $1.5 million worth of USDT over eight days in 2020. Chinese authorities later arrested him for suspected money laundering; he was convicted and spent several years in prison.

UKDE, which acquired roughly $867,000 worth of USDT, was the subject of a consumer warning from the U.K.’s financial regulatory authority in 2023 for providing unauthorized financial services. The company, which had raised at least $12 million in investment capital, has been liquidated, its phone number disconnected. If you go to its old website, ukde.com, you’ll be automatically forwarded to another site that reveals the fate of the former Tether client. It says: “This domain has been seized by the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, Financial Crimes Unit.”

The seizures from the Met have largely consisted of works the museum acquired from a small group of collectors with links to suspected trafficking networks that targeted cultural sites spanning from Rome to rural Cambodia. ICIJ’s previous reporting identified more than a thousand pieces in the Met’s catalog tied to people who were indicted or convicted of antiquities crimes. These included Subhash Kapoor, whom U.S. authorities identified as “one of the most prolific commodities smugglers in the world,” and Robert E. Hecht, whom Italy charged with trafficking.

A new analysis shows the Met still holds hundreds of objects once owned by the very same people who account for most of the antiquities seized from the museum in recent years. This includes Hecht, Kapoor and others linked to trafficking. Kapoor was arrested in Germany in 2011 and later convicted in India of trafficking crimes. Hecht denied involvement in the illegal exportation of art and died in 2012.

In response to a request from ICIJ, the Met said it has identified and expedited research into several hundred works connected with certain dealers as a part of a broader review of its collection. The museum said that it takes an object-by-object approach to the research and pointed to two pieces associated with Hecht that it said have excellent origin records.

“The Met doesn’t want any stolen art in our collection,” Lucian Simmons, the museum’s head of provenance research, told ICIJ in an emailed statement. “We’ve devoted substantial resources to researching works in our care and sharing our findings online and with experts around the world. These efforts have produced meaningful results, including repatriations of objects to multiple countries.”

The museum also still holds pieces once owned by Douglas Latchford, a previously indicted art dealer believed to have played a key role in the mass pillaging of Cambodia’s cultural heritage. Latchford died in 2020.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/hidden-treasures/met-taps-sothebys-executive-to-lead-new-provenance-research-team/

IMPACT Met taps Sotheby’s executive to lead new provenance research team Mar 27, 2024

https://www.icij.org/investigations/hidden-treasures/after-cambodia-celebrated-the-return-of-lost-treasures-the-met-ejected-a-lawyer-who-helped-make-it-happen/

THE MET After Cambodia celebrated the return of lost treasures, the Met ejected a lawyer who helped make it happen Sep 04, 2024

https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/mystery-company-ties-accused-temple-raiders-to-art-world-elite/

Art Mystery company ties accused temple raiders to art world elite Sep 22, 2020

Recommended reading IMPACT Met taps Sotheby’s executive to lead new provenance research team Mar 27, 2024 THE MET After Cambodia celebrated the return of lost treasures, the Met ejected a lawyer who helped make it happen Sep 04, 2024 Art Mystery company ties accused temple raiders to art world elite Sep 22, 2020

At the heart of the claim are around a dozen contracts that the Kashagan consortium of oil companies had issued to a handful of international engineering and construction firms that built key parts of the Kazakh mega field during the 2000s.

The claim amounts to the most serious accusation yet to surface from the Kazakh government in the closely watched international arbitration dispute between Central Asia’s biggest oil producing state and the North Caspian Operating Consortium (NCOC) that operates Kashagan. The consortium is made up of Shell, ExxonMobil, Eni, TotalEnergies, China National Petroleum Company and Japan’s Inpex.

The claim is part of a $160 billion international arbitration action over the Kashagan project that also includes allegations of lost profits and environmental damage.

The arbitration tribunal, registered at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, is yet to make any decision on the corruption claims, people familiar with the situation said.

The NCOC told ICIJ via email that the consortium members “consider that they have acted in accordance with the relevant contracts, [Kazakh] laws and applicable standards and best practices.”

“Due to the confidential nature of the proceedings, we are unable to provide further comments,” the consortium added.

Kazakhstan is contending that crucial delays at Kashagan, hailed as the world’s biggest oil find after Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, were in part caused by alleged corruption over contract awards to international companies and the mismanagement that ensued during the 2000s, sources told ICIJ.

These alleged corruption-related setbacks, Kazakhstan claims, postponed the start of full production at Kashagan and therefore the start of the profit-sharing phase — the most lucrative for the Kazakh state — even as the oil companies have continued to recover their claimed development costs. Available estimates for the latter hover around the $60 billion mark, though that is believed to be a conservative figure.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/caspian-cabals/behind-closed-doors-kazakhstan-challenges-decades-old-deal-with-160-billion-claim-against-big-oil/

CASPIAN CABALS Behind closed doors, Kazakhstan challenges decades-old deal with $160 billion claim against Big Oil Apr 16, 2025

https://www.icij.org/investigations/caspian-cabals/timur-kulibayev-nazarbayev-kazakhstan-oil-riches/

Caspian Cabals Oil giants ignored red flags, enriched elite for Kazakhstan pipe dream Nov 22, 2024

https://www.icij.org/investigations/caspian-cabals/karachaganak-oil-field-kazakhstan-berezovka-chronic-illness/

BROKEN PROMISES The lost village: Western oil companies enriched Kazakhstan’s power brokers — and left a community in ruins Nov 22, 2024

Recommended reading CASPIAN CABALS Behind closed doors, Kazakhstan challenges decades-old deal with $160 billion claim against Big Oil Apr 16, 2025 Caspian Cabals Oil giants ignored red flags, enriched elite for Kazakhstan pipe dream Nov 22, 2024 BROKEN PROMISES The lost village: Western oil companies enriched Kazakhstan’s power brokers — and left a community in ruins Nov 22, 2024

Authorities allege that Kinahan, 49, oversaw a global narco-trafficking operation that was tied to a bloody gang war in Ireland that resulted in numerous killings.

Kinahan was taken to the Special Criminal Court in Dublin under armed escort after being flown to an aerodrome west of the city on a Dassault Falcon 6X by the Irish Air Corps.

Unrepresented in court, he was ordered to remain in custody at Portlaoise Prison, a high-security prison about 90 miles south of the capital.

Ahead of his return, Kinahan reportedly told podcaster James English that he was “looking forward to getting home,” although conceded his return would be “bittersweet.”

Daniel Kinahan’s father, Kinahan cartel founder Christopher Sr, and brother, Christopher Jr, remain in Dubai despite being global law enforcement targets.

U.S. authorities issued wanted posters for members of the Kinahan family. Image: via U.S. State Department

Kinahan Sr previously served time in Portlaoise Prison for trafficking heroin.

Two others alleged to be leaders of the Kinahan cartel, Ian Thomas Dixon and Bernard Patrick Clancy, also remain free in Dubai.

Large rewards have been offered for information leading to the men’s arrests and convictions.

Daniel Kinahan followed in the path of 40-year-old Sean McGov­ern, the first Kinahan car­tel mem­ber to be extra­dited from Dubai to Dub­lin last year.

McGovern, a senior lieutenant in the group, was convicted of directing the activities of a criminal organization and is serving 24 years in prison.

Another key alleged Kinahan cartel figure, John Francis Morrissey, is currently on bail in Spain, where he is facing a money laundering investigation.

Authorities say the Kinahan drug smuggling and money laundering empire stretched from the U.A.E to Ireland, the U.K., Colombia, Spain, the Netherlands, the U.S., Australia, Brazil and Zimbabwe.

A European Union investigation found the group used dozens of front companies to move heroin, cocaine and other drugs.

ICIJ uncovered Emirati corporate records showing that Kinahan and his younger brother established several Dubai companies.

https://www.icij.org/news/2025/05/christopher-kinahan-cian-sharkhin-portlaoise-prison-writing/

THE KINAHANS How a dark reimagining of ‘Dumbo the Elephant’ shaped the business dealings of an Irish drug lord May 16, 2025

https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2025/03/drug-kingpin-daniel-kinahan-was-paid-millions-of-dollars-under-the-table-to-be-top-promoters-exclusive-agent-court-complaint-alleges/

KINAHAN CARTEL Drug kingpin Daniel Kinahan was paid millions ‘under the table’ to be boxing promoter’s exclusive agent, court complaint alleges Mar 05, 2025

https://www.icij.org/news/2024/05/dubai-property-portfolio-calls-into-question-effectiveness-of-sanctions-on-kinahan-cartel-leader-experts-say/

CRIME CARTEL Dubai property portfolio calls into question effectiveness of sanctions on Kinahan cartel leader, experts say May 14, 2024

Recommended reading THE KINAHANS How a dark reimagining of ‘Dumbo the Elephant’ shaped the business dealings of an Irish drug lord May 16, 2025 KINAHAN CARTEL Drug kingpin Daniel Kinahan was paid millions ‘under the table’ to be boxing promoter’s exclusive agent, court complaint alleges Mar 05, 2025 CRIME CARTEL Dubai property portfolio calls into question effectiveness of sanctions on Kinahan cartel leader, experts say May 14, 2024

The company’s token, known as USDT, is a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar that has become the backbone of a parallel banking system pervading parts of the world. The token has also become a key tool for money launderers for industrial-scale scam centers, which operate out of grim office complexes across Southeast Asia. Tether’s assistance in law enforcement investigations has become highly sought-after by agencies around the world struggling to address surging crypto crime.

Because of Tether’s barebones workforce — it employs just a few hundred people — the stablecoin giant’s low overhead helps to produce astonishing profits. These riches have made Tether a rainmaker in global finance, becoming a bigger buyer of U.S. government debt than Saudi Arabia or South Korea.

But who owns this powerful and controversial firm? The company has never given a full picture publicly. Estimates of who owns how much of Tether are at odds with each other. Because most firms worth many billions are publicly traded — a distinction that generally comes with disclosures of a firm’s major owners — Tether may also place among the most opaque companies of its size.

Questions around Tether’s ownership are of growing urgency, as U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s firm Cantor Fitzgerald acquired rights to 5 percent of Tether in 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal. Such a stake could now be worth an estimated $10 billion. Like many of Tether’s ownership details, this remains unconfirmed by the company itself.

It’s a concern to have that much wealth and power built up within a small group of people with so little disclosure. — law professor Renée Jones

These unknowns epitomize a trend in which massive companies are increasingly opting to stay private instead of listing their stocks on public markets — a step that requires them to open up their books to the public. This means that regular people, investors and government officials are left with less information about companies even as they surge in size and importance. In Tether’s case, the private firm is pioneering a new global financial system while having never released results of a full audit of its reserves.

“It’s a concern to have that much wealth and power built up within a small group of people with so little disclosure,” says Renée Jones, a law professor at Boston College who has written extensively about problems posed by the opacity of large private companies. “It makes the jobs of regulators and government investigators harder when massive companies are not subject to a public disclosure regime in any country.”

In lieu of formal public disclosure of Tether’s major owners, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists examined a mix of public records and internal company files to trace clues of who owns how much of the firm. In our reporting we found that, in its early days, Tether underwent large changes to its ownership that experts say appeared unusual and we found indications that one Tether executive, Giancarlo Devasini, may have recently increased his control over the firm.

Cryptocurrency’s original mission was in part to build a financial system free from government oversight. As it pushes the bounds of corporate privacy, Tether may hint at a future in which people can engage in anonymous financial transactions using private money minted by multinational behemoths that answer to few government authorities. That world might already be here today.

Giancarlo Devasini. Image: via Tether.to

In the years to come, they would turn Tether into a powerhouse. A former plastic surgeon, Devasini was hawking DVDs on a bitcoin forum just a decade before entering the ranks of the world’s wealthiest, according to Faux. Van der Velde, a Dutch entrepreneur, had previously dealt in electronics.

In Tether’s first few years, the two men moved company shares between themselves as if they were monopoly money. In early 2016, Devasini owned 100 percent of Tether Holdings, the British Virgin Islands firm identified as Tether’s parent company, according to shareholding records from ICIJ’s Paradise Papers trove that have not been previously reported.

In January of that year, Tether executives asked for a big change to the company’s ownership, and they wanted it quickly. In emails to their corporate administrator, Tether representatives arranged for documents to be sent to Hong Kong that would transfer at least 55% of Devasini’s shares in Tether Holdings to van der Velde, according to the records. In the transfer, another chunk of Devasini’s shares went to a firm called DigFinex Inc.

This arrangement didn’t last long. Tether ownership documents from around 2018 that ICIJ reviewed shows that, roughly two years later, van der Velde’s share of Tether had fallen to just around 15% while Devasini had risen to again become the firm’s largest single shareholder at roughly 43% ownership.

Several experts told ICIJ that such a dramatic transfer of ownership between partners is unusual, even in an early-stage startup, though not necessarily a red flag. The Tether records from around 2018 showed that Paolo Ardoino, now Tether’s CEO, owned about 3.5% of the firm at that time. Forbes estimates Ardoino now owns 20% of Tether.

The same ownership records listed a person named Kristian Hansen as owning 6.6% of Tether at the time. ICIJ was unable to reach Hansen. If retained, the stake would now be worth more than $13 billion, going by Forbes’ valuation of Tether.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported the 2018 ownership numbers for Devasini, van der Velde and two other businessmen who also held large stakes: Christopher Harborne and Stuart Hoegner. ICIJ was unable to determine their current ownership stakes. Tether did not respond to ICIJ’s questions about the ownership numbers.

Forbes ranks Devasini as the 22nd richest person on earth with an estimated net worth of $89.3 billion.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/coin-laundry/video-cryptocurrency-global-investigation/

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Manufacturers of all cancer drugs sold in India have until July 2027 to add a QR code or barcode to their packaging that shows the medicine’s path from factory to patient, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The new requirements apply not only to drugs manufactured in India but also to those imported into the country, such as Keytruda, a health official confirmed to The Indian Express this week.

As part of the Cancer Calculus investigation, The Indian Expressand the International Consortium of Investigative Journalistsexamined India’s counterfeit Keytruda market, where counterfeiters took advantage of cancer patients and sold them falsified versions of the medication. 

Reporting focused on a case in 2024 when police in New Delhi arrested 12 men for allegedly stealing empty Keytruda vials from hospitals and pharmacies and refilling them with antifungal medicine. The men then allegedly sold the spurious medicines at a fraction of the cost of authentic Keytruda. In India, the drug is unaffordable for most families; the market price for a 100-mg vial of Keytruda is 150,000 rupees, or more than $1,500. The case affected patients beyond India, too. At least one Nepalese woman purchased medicine from one of the accused defendants, ICIJ reported.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/cancer-calculus/cancer-drug-counterfeits-keytruda-immunotherapy/

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The procurement data, released by the U.N. in July, reveals at least 11 companies that reportedly had been closely linked to the Assad regime, and which continued to receive U.N. contracts after its fall.

One of those companies is Shorouk, a Syrian security firm that received at least $11 million in U.N. contracts during Assad’s rule. In December 2025, ICIJ revealed that Shorouk was secretly owned by a branch of Assad’s intelligence services. As a result, aid money flowed directly to a government agency sanctioned for the brutal torture and murder of Syrian civilians.

Shorouk won more than $1.6 million in U.N. contracts in 2025, only slightly less than the year prior.

Another security firm, ProGuard, received $2.2 million in U.N. contracts in 2025, making it the United Nations’ largest security contractor in Syria. Under Assad, ProGuard was reportedly owned by a businessman and former parliamentarian who was sanctioned by the European Union and United Kingdom for supporting the Syrian regime.

The Syrian government’s strategy of negotiating opaque deals with Assad-linked business elites likely explains the continued existence of many U.N. contractors with links to the former regime. Syrian officials have reached financial settlements with several of the country’s oligarchs and reportedly are negotiating with others. As part of these deals, the businessmen handed over a large percentage of their assets in return for being allowed to return to work in Syria.

This policy has been undertaken in a secretive and haphazard manner that risks undermining transitional justice efforts, experts told ICIJ.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/damascus-dossier/assad-intelligence-security-united-nations-aid/

UNITED NATIONS United Nations paid $11M to Syrian security firm owned by Assad intelligence services, documents show Dec 04, 2025

https://www.icij.org/investigations/damascus-dossier/syria-assad-regime-detained-dead-search-families/

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