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ICIJ Profile picture
@ICIJorg
Jun 7, 2022 • 9 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
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🧵/ Days ago, the U.S. blocked the Madame Gu yacht and other holdings linked to sanctioned Russian billionaire Andrei Skoch.

#ParadisePapers reveals the network of middlemen he used to acquire the yacht and other luxury assets worth hundreds of millions. bit.ly/3MpOold
The U.S. aims to degrade the key networks used by Putin’s allies to anonymously hide and move money via luxury assets around the world, and targets prominent individuals as well as yacht brokerages, defense industry entities and other service companies. bit.ly/3MpOold
The "richest man in the Duma" deployed tactics similar to other oligarchs by using an elite firm, a web of shell companies and a trusted proxy — in this case, his romantic partner — to finance the acquisition of two yachts and a villa, leaked records show. bit.ly/3MpOold A leaked memo states that Elena Likhach has children with buA leaked memo states that Elena Likhach has children with bu
The documents show the willingness of middlemen and enablers to please wealthy clients who want to keep ties to valuable assets secret.

Appleby is one of many elite firms that have long serviced powerful Russians despite their known links to the Kremlin. bit.ly/3MpOold A 2013 know-your-customer review leaked from Appleby include
Beginning in 2007, Appleby helped Elena Likhach — listed in leaked files as a housewife — set up shell companies to own yachts, buy a Seychelles villa, and manage payroll for a 35-member crew, a chef and housekeepers. bit.ly/3MpOold The “Gu” yacht is pictured in a 2010 yacht management re
A compliance officer warned Appleby of their client’s association with Andrei Skoch in 2013, noting his alleged criminal ties and that “gifts” from the Russian billionaire were the source of Likhach’s offshore activities.

The concerns were dismissed. bit.ly/3MpOold In a leaked know-your-customer review from 2013, an Appleby
The firm is one of a number of professional middlemen — including bankers, brokers, attorneys, accountants, tax advisers, shipbuilders and more — who’ve helped Putin’s allies secretly scoop up luxury playthings around the world, ICIJ reporting has shown. bit.ly/3xq3Nha
Since Russia’s war on Ukraine began, the U.S. has gotten more aggressive about locating and seizing assets of sanctioned oligarchs — a mission made difficult by Russian elites’ widespread use of the offshore economy to conceal massive holdings and deals. bit.ly/3KSBXxg
Years of ICIJ exposés like #PanamaPapers, #ParadisePapers & #PandoraPapers has shed light on the players in this system.

➡️ Subscribe to follow our ongoing reporting on the financial secrets of Putin’s inner circle using our vast trove of leaked records: bit.ly/3ccyb2i

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More from @ICIJorg

ICIJ Profile picture
Apr 28
In the United States — the country with the highest drug prices and overall health care spending among developed nations — Tiffany Ferguson fears her insurance company will stop paying for her cancer treatment. icij.org/investigations…
Ferguson, 42, was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in January 2019. “My doctor showed me the scan and said, ‘This isn’t good. You either have tuberculosis or cancer,’ ” Ferguson recalled. “I remember praying to God that it was tuberculosis.”
Years of treatments — including chemotherapy, a stem-cell transplant and targeted IV therapy — held the tumors back, but they returned in 2021.

In March 2022, her doctor switched her to Keytruda, Merck & Co.’s blockbuster immunotherapy drug. icij.org/investigations…
Read 7 tweets
ICIJ Profile picture
Apr 16
After Bhinnata Piya’s mother was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 2020, Piya was determined to be a supportive caregiver. Her father had died of the same type of cancer only three years earlier, and the loss devastated the tight-knit Nepalese family.
icij.org/investigations…A quote by Bhinnata Piya, 36, project manager, reads “When our dad died, I was just crying so much. We didn’t do enough. But when my mom died, I really felt like we did all that we could.” Card includes a photo of Piya sitting down going through a family photo album.
Piya had moved back to Nepal from Cleveland for six months. There she cared for her 63-year-old mother, Sita Gurung. She paid thousands of dollars toward Gurung’s more than $40,000 treatment.

At the end of 2022, Gurung's health worsened. A photo of a page of Bhinnata Piya's photo album, with two photos of her and her mom, wearing masks.
Her doctor prescribed Keytruda, an expensive immunotherapy treatment. Following the doctor’s recommendation, they bought the medication from a hospital worker in India who ran a medical tourism business.
icij.org/investigations…
Read 8 tweets
ICIJ Profile picture
Dec 5, 2025
Hidden within a drab Damascus shopping center sits the unmarked office of Shorouk for Protection, Guarding and Security Services — an unassuming security company that raked in at least $11 million from the United Nations to protect U.N. offices during the Syrian civil war. Two photos side by side. The one on the left shows the outside of a commercial building. The one on the right shows an entrance to one of the offices inside the building.
Now, internal documents reveal the company was secretly owned by the intelligence services of former President Bashar Assad’s regime.

As the United Nations poured money into the firm, those intelligence services were engaged in a violent campaign to crush opposition. A bar graph titled "U.N. agencies paid $11 million to Assad regime-tied firm."
In one leaked memo, Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad wrote that ensuring Shorouk and other security firms maintained their U.N. contracts was important because their personnel were monitoring U.N. employees for Assad. icij.org/investigations…
Read 7 tweets
ICIJ Profile picture
Dec 6, 2024
#CaspianCabals journalists from over a dozen countries probed the Kremlin’s control and Western interests in a critical Russia-Kazakhstan oil pipeline, and how its influence and impact spread to Europe, the U.S. and beyond.

Here are some of their stories: buff.ly/49rSZAl
Over the past two years, the Netherlands' oil imports from Kazakhstan have increased eightfold, ICIJ’s Dutch partner @nrc found, largely driven by sanctions on Russian oil. But the relationship between the countries' oil industries is “toxic and shaky.” buff.ly/3ZrXTbU
@nrc A small town in Germany is thriving thanks to a local refinery that plays a pivotal role in processing crude for the petrochemical industry, where at least some of the oil comes from Kazakhstan, ICIJ’s German media partners @derspiegel and @ZDFheute found. buff.ly/3OKrc4O
Read 5 tweets
ICIJ Profile picture
Aug 2, 2024
Since the 1950s, Israel Bonds, which sells bonds to fund Israel’s government, has evolved, increasingly courting banks and other institutional investors.

In recent years, U.S. states and municipalities have sunk billions into Israeli bonds. buff.ly/3SwnUUM
Thousands of records obtained by ICIJ reveal Israel Bonds’ tight relationship with U.S. institutional investors, and how some officials who buy Israeli bonds have had access to gala dinners, cocktail celebrations, and private meetings with Israeli leaders.buff.ly/3SwnUUM
A spokesperson for Israel Bonds told ICIJ that the bonds are safe investments with steady returns, and described the group’s sales strategy as “just like any other business.” But ethics experts say such dealings are not always so straightforward.

buff.ly/3SwnUUM
A quote by Richard W. Painter, a law professor who was a chief White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, reads “These types of practices, the mixing up of the personal and official, seem to go well beyond what’s seen as acceptable.”
Read 6 tweets
ICIJ Profile picture
May 14, 2024
Interpol has asked governments worldwide to find and provisionally arrest Isabel dos Santos, yet the former Angolan billionaire isn't hiding. Instead, she often posts about her lavish lifestyle at a Dubai residence.

The country has remained her safe haven.buff.ly/3ykHpIP
Newly leaked Dubai property data reviewed by ICIJ for #DubaiUnlocked reveal that dos Santos and her mother, Tatiana “Kukanova” Regan, co-own an apartment in a building called Sadaf, Arabic for “seashell,” overlooking Dubai Marina and the Persian Gulf. buff.ly/3ykHpIP
The eldest daughter of Angola’s former president, dos Santos came under scrutiny by authorities on three continents after ICIJ’s #LuandaLeaks revealed how lucrative deals obtained under her father’s rule helped her become Africa’s richest woman. buff.ly/3UY5DBE
Read 5 tweets

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