Open source investigations

Riva Levinson, the consultant who led Nana Akufo-Addo’s 2016 presidential campaign, is frequently hired by dictators, autocrats, guerrilla leaders and corrupt politicians to whitewash their crimes. Levinson did PR for Somali dictator Siad Barre even as he was massacring civilians. She was hired by Jonas Savimbi, leader of Unita, an Angolan separatist group funded by… Continue reading

Although we faced constant pressure from some Belgian media outlets, we continued to report about the so-called Kazakhgate affair, convinced that in the end the truth will prevail. This is what kept us going during our long journalistic investigation on this topic. In the process, we have been accused of being part of Putin’s propaganda… Continue reading

It’s been almost a year since the creation of the Belgian parliamentary commission aiming to investigate the circumstances that led to the adoption of the extended settlement law. Normally, its workings should have been concluded by now. Instead, it lost two experts, it was marred in scandals concerning press leaks, and it failed to come… Continue reading

The so-called Kazakhgate inquiry commission in the Belgian Parliament is about to conclude its workings. The parties forming the majority apparently wish to make the commission stop until 21 July at the very latest. What have we found so far? According to Dirk Van der Maelen, the commission’s president, what we found is very different… Continue reading

On 18 July 2016, thousands of people gathered in Buenos Aires to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA). Holding up pictures of the 85 people who died in Argentina’s deadliest terror attack ever, they were calling for those responsible, including former Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar… Continue reading

When on 22 March this year the Kazakhgate commission in the Belgian Parliament questioned the former CEO of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC), Freddy Hanard, it was very shy. No powerful questions were asked. It was as if the members of the commission were afraid to reveal too much of the truth, namely that… Continue reading

Despite early efforts, the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission can no longer ignore the obvious: According to its president, Dirk Van der Maelen, the Commission concluded that the settlement law was drafted by the diamond lobby for the benefit of the diamond dealers involved in fraud investigations. However this conclusion was not based on the testimonies of… Continue reading

It has taken Belgian Parliamentary Inquiry Commission four months to discover the obvious: the enlargement of the criminal settlement law was drafted by the Antwerp diamond lobby in 2009. On 10 April 2017, Dirk Van der Maelen, the president of the commission, bragged in an interview: “We have now discovered in the inquiry that the Verherstraeten… Continue reading

OSI offered ample evidence that the law voted on 14 April 2011 in the Belgian Parliament amending the Code of Criminal procedure by allowing prosecuted individuals and companies to enter into transactions with the Public Prosecutor to terminate the public prosecution of offences – the so-called “extended criminal transaction” – was in fact drafted and… Continue reading

„I made a commitment to the Zimbabwean minister of Mines to help lift the European Union sanctions on Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation and I worked extremely hard to keep these promises”. As strange as it may seem, it was not a government official or a politician who made that statement. It was Antwerp World Diamond… Continue reading