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Zack Kopplin Profile picture
Zack Kopplin
@ZackKopplin
Investigations @GovAcctProj. Find me on the other site
2 subscribers
Oct 25, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Something crazy to think about in Mike Johnson’s sudden rise to power. About eight years ago, while he was simply the lawyer for the Creationism Museum, he gave me his cell phone because his lack of prominence made it worth it for him to give me quotes to write mean things about Never in a million years would I have imagined this dude becoming speaker, and uh, it’s not great
Feb 19, 2023 • 33 tweets • 9 min read
Ross Roggio allegedly kidnapped a whistleblower, and held him hostage on a Kurdish military base, torturing and tasering him until he bled, for 39 days. He's facing over 700 years in prison. For @rollingstone, I got the inside story of his life and crimes You can read it here but these are my favorite parts of what is a truly insane tale rollingstone.com/politics/polit…
Apr 6, 2022 • 30 tweets • 10 min read
Hidden Russian oligarch money has gotten a lot of attention recently, but @basmoose and I dived into another secret set of investments worth hundreds of millions: nearly 300 properties connected to Iraqi Kurdistan's Barzani family. This is the story, for @TheProspect
prospect.org/power/how-olig…
Dec 6, 2021 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
I'm launching an exciting new big data investigation that will probably consume the next year and a half of my life. That means I won't be writing one-off investigations for the foreseeable future. But my last article is coming out tomorrow in the @TheProspect and It's legit It's about the Barzani family in Iraqi Kurdistan and their hidden wealth. Tomorrow, I will reveal a multi million dollar secret business owned by the Kurdish Prime Minister, but in the process I found other secret properties owned by the family. Not all of that made the story
Dec 6, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
At least two lmao They were definitely my best professors
Dec 5, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Ok, someone already got the country, Kurdistan, but the especially fun part of this is the specific business that was purchased Or I should say semi independent region
Aug 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Now tell us about corruption at the central bank pls The tweet bashing Ghani from the Afghan embassy in India was good because it was simple, raw, and probably done by an intern (or at least was anonymous so it wasn't laundering some corrupt official's reputation). This from Ahmady is not the same
Aug 16, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Before we published this article, I spoke to a person who worked in a D.C. think tank who told me that not a single other would acknowledge the investigation because it was too embarrassing and hit too close to home.
Aug 15, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
We’re going to hear a lot about how the collapse of Afghanistan was inevitable in the next few days. It wasn’t. If the CIA and Pentagon hadn’t spent twenty years enabling corrupt warlords and politicians, things might be different American and Afghan elites are to blame for this and they deserve that blame
Apr 28, 2021 • 29 tweets • 8 min read
So what does this mining project look like in reality? For that we go back to Emily Scott King, who helpfully gave a presentation on it at a Special Forces conference in 2019

A couple interesting points, she directly ties Southern Development to the old Kunar project and outlines a $4 million investment by SOSi. But she also mentions a mysterious $10 million investment into Afghan chromite mines.
Apr 28, 2021 • 61 tweets • 17 min read
What is America fighting for in Afghanistan? After a two year investigation, @B_Margaux and I uncovered an illegal mining corruption ring involving an American military contractor, the President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, his brother, Hashmat, and even American Special Forces The story is published here, with @OCCRP, and it gets even more important now, with the withdrawal of U.S. troops planned for September, as the bulk of the American involvement in Afghanistan will be through contractors.

occrp.org/en/investigati…
Apr 28, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Filled with anxiety and extreme excitement because @B_Margaux and I should be dropping our mini Panama Papers story in a few hours. If you like world leaders being caught doing crimes via sketchy secrecy havens, we've got the story for you This story has been over two years in the making and I'm so glad to see it finally published. Especially because over 40 editors rejected it or ignored me or ghosted me and I'm so ready to see this project through anyway. (I've got a list somewhere in my notes.)
Mar 25, 2021 • 44 tweets • 10 min read
Last year, I obtained documents showing American military contractors making payoffs to companies connected to Iranian-backed militias and two former Prime Ministers of Iraq on a $2 billion contract. Now that story is out and this is how I put it together

prospect.org/world/how-pent… I was tipped off, that fuel deliveries to Sallyport Global, the American company that operates Iraq's Balad Air Base, had been attacked. This was in the spring of 2017, during the final push to remove ISIS from Mosul. Not having access to Balad's jets was less than ideal
Dec 10, 2020 • 30 tweets • 8 min read
This summer, I was tipped off about a Delaware shell company, Delta Crescent Energy, with deep connections to State Department leadership and the Trump administration that had been granted special permission to deal in Syrian oil. This is part of Trump's policy to take the oil in Syria. American troops guard the wells and Delta Crescent, through its unique position as the only company allowed by the U.S. government to deal in Syrian oil, holds a monopoly.
Dec 9, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Congratulations to Pete Buttigieg on pretending to speak an 8th language *Pete Buttigieg tries to speak and says something horribly offensive by messing up the tones*
Jun 5, 2020 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
Since campus censor @bariweiss is back on her bullshit, let me tell a story I've never told publicly before, about what real censorship by people with actual power looks like, when people with power (on campus) want to stop you talking, not like her fake outrage nonsense When I was in college, in Texas, I was very involved with the movement to teach real science and history in schools, specifically climate change, the role of slavery in the Civil War, and evolution. Obviously that upset people and I got death threats through college.
Jan 7, 2020 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
From a source at Balad air base in Iraq about evacuation: “Every one had their weapons taken away, the base entry gates are wide open but for some unexplained reason the finance manager (who is dating the married security director) has a weapon without training or certification.” “As it stands, hundreds still await tickets for travel and the company can't even keep that straight as their 30 minute process per ticket is further delayed but these incompetent fools buying tickets for people already gone.”
Jul 26, 2019 • 84 tweets • 52 min read
On Wednesday, @mcculloughirvin and I published a massive dive into a U.S. military contractor. Y'all were too busy tweeting about optics then, so read it now.
thedailybeast.com/the-shady-conn… @mcculloughirvin There are six basic allegations. The first is that an American military contractor, SOS International, made a corrupt deal with an Iraqi cartel that we call Afaq. Afaq is tied to Iraq's former Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki.