It started with just a name on a company registration form: Antonino Vadala. Because that name belonged to a man in business with Maria Troskova – a model turned businesswoman who became an assistant to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico – reporters wanted to know more. That curiosity may have killed Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak along with his fiancée. Both were found shot to death last weekend, plainly at the hands of a professional hitman. But Kuciak and his partners – the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Czech Center for Investigative Journalism (CCIJ) – had realized they found...
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Ján Kuciak and Our Last Unfinished Investigation
When the bodies of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancé Martina Kusnirova, both 27, were found this Sunday – each killed by a single shot in their newly purchased home – Slovak journalists were shocked. Slovakia’s top politicians have recently been criticized for openly expressing hostility to independent journalists, but no reporter in the country has ever before been killed for their work. Police said that the couple had been killed by one or more professional hitmen and that their deaths were likely in retaliation for one of Kuciak’s stories. Slovak media speculated wildly that the youthful Kuciak had been...
War Dog Millionaire: Czech Companies Bought Tens of Millions of Old Ammunition
In 2008, an attempt to decommission part of Albania’s aging, deadly stockpile of Cold War-era munitions went horribly wrong. At about noon on March 15, a series of explosions at a facility in the village of Gërdec sent fireballs into the sky, artillery shells into homes, and shockwaves slamming into the nearby capital, Tirana. The disaster killed at least 26 people. But Albania’s tragedy turned out to be a business opportunity for two rival Czech companies. Interviews and documents obtained by OCCRP show that, by prompting the Albanian government to unload its dangerous Communist-era munitions, the catastrophe opened the way for Czech...
War Dog Millionaire: Czech President’s Main Donor on Balkan Arms Shopping Spree
Czech President Miloš Zeman likes to joke about shooting journalists. The veteran politician, who is running for reelection this week, recently earned international opprobrium when, sporting a faux assault rifle, he figuratively took aimat the press. As it turns out, if Zeman ever wants to make good on his threats, his chief financial backer may have plenty of bullets handy. An investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and partners reveals that companies linked to Jaroslav Strnad, Zeman’s main campaign financier, have been on a secretive, years-long Balkan shopping spree, aided in part by controversial local figures, one...
War Dog Millionaire: Strnad’s Balkan Factory Buy-Up
Czech arms tycoon Jaroslav Strnad did not limit his Balkan shopping spree to stockpiled Chinese munitions. The businessman also bought at least two bankrupt, formerly state-owned factories in the former Yugoslavia, both of which are linked to the arms industry. He made the first of those purchases, the Suvenir ammunition factory in the Macedonian village of Samokov, in 2010. He bought the second, the 14. Oktobar factory in the Serbian city of Kruševac, last year. Strnad’s dealings in both countries have involved figures linked to a clique of politicians and security officials accused of running a mafia state under Macedonia’s...
Ex-Tajik Railways Chief’s Czech Bonanza
Amonullo Hukumov, the former head of Tajik Railways, has told the media that neither he nor his wife own any real estate abroad. But records obtained by OCCRP show that his family has spent over $10.6 million on luxury real estate in two of the Czech Republic’s most popular tourist destinations. The hefty price tag raises questions about the source of the family’s wealth. Neither scandals nor forced retirement have slowed down the Hukumov family’s real estate purchases. The wife and children of Amonullo Hukumov, once the powerful head of Tajik Railways, own six properties in Karlovy Vary and Marianske...