Reporter

Category: Articles

Reporter and 5 partners investigate the associate of top presidential candidate in Romania

BUCHAREST — Mircea Geoană’s ex-campaign manager in Romania has business ties to a Russian who is close to the military and has campaigned for the Russian side in the Ukraine war. The campaign manager’s son also did a deal with a former executive from a company founded by a sanctioned oligarch, while the dad was…

October 8, 2024
Thrills, pills and political skills: Reporter and Daily Beast reveal dodgy links of Trump media funder

LONDON–In collaboration with the Daily Beast and ace reporter Matt Bernardini, Reporter popped the lid off the connections between a Russian-American funder of Donad Trump’s social media startup, and a brand of male potency pills that were deemed dangerous by the US Food and Drug Administration. The exclusive investigation was published here.

April 30, 2024
Arm’s-length: Uzbek tycoon with links to Putin pal and sanctioned Russian bank grabs strategic assets in Europe

LONDON–Eriell Group is the top oil and gas services company in Uzbekistan, but until recently, its corporate headquarters was in Jersey. The firm’s chairman continues to do multi-million euro deals in Europe despite Eriell’s close ties to sanctioned Gazprombank and, allegedly, Gennady Timchenko, a sanctioned oligarch and personal friend of Vladimir Putin. The Eriell parent…

March 26, 2024
Regulator imposes “extremely serious” restrictions on London fintech of Russian-American financier with links to Trump and DeSantis

LONDON—Electronic payments company Dek-Co (aka Paydek) – whose owner is linked to Donald Trump’s Truth Social website as well as Paxum, another payments company catering to the online porn industry — has come under severe regulatory restrictions in September 2023, banning it from continuing to provide service to one existing client and from taking on…

November 2, 2023
Washington Post and Reporter shed light on Trump social media firm financing

The top U.S. newspaper picked up on previous coverage of Paxum and its executives by Reporter.London, teaming up with this outlet and freelance journalist Matt Bernardini to expose the details of a line of financing provided by Paxum’s Anton Postonikov to Donald Trump’s social media network. Among the revelations was that Postolnikov was connected to…

May 17, 2023
Opaque offshore transactions at London-based Kazphosphate

An MP and a campaigner call for authorities to investigate anonymous loans to the UK firm, which until last year controlled a top chemicals and mining company in Kazakhstan. LONDON—Amid all the hard talk about the urgency of stopping dark money from entering the UK from countries with a history of high-level corruption, untransparent transactions…

May 12, 2023
Owner of Paxum, the fintech linked to Russia and Trump, donated to Ron DeSantis

LONDON–A man linked by US prosecutors to suspicious financing of a company belonging to Donald Trump has also made a substantial donation to Trump’s rival Ron DeSantis. Anton Postolnikov, with a given address in Miami Beach, Florida, appears on a public register of “friends of Ron DeSantis” as having given $30,000 on 29 March 2021…

March 16, 2023
Reporter and openDemocracy: call for sanctions on Transnistria

Reporter, collaborating with Irina Tabaranu, the editor of Transnistria-focused website Zona De Securitate, and openDemocracy, the UK-based news outlet, have exclusively revealed a call by influential sanctions campaigner Bill Browder to impose penalties on the regime in Transnistria over its treatment of pro-Ukraine dissident Victor Pleșcanov. Pleșcanov, whose case Reporter and Zona de Securitate have…

March 9, 2023
Reporter and BuzzFeed analyse human trafficking in Romania

The collaboration, published on February 21, came about in the context of the arrest of controversial online influencer Andrew Tate, under suspicion of human trafficking, rape, forming an organised crime group and other crimes — along with his brother and two female accomplices. They deny the allegations. Reporter has dug up exclusive detail about how…

March 8, 2023
Reporter and AMLi delve into the uneven application of UK and EU sanctions

The latest collaboration between Reporter.London and the financial crime newswire AMLIntelligence, published on February 13, shows how sanctions on Russia and Belarus are often failing in practice, because of contradictory interpretations of the rules and the guidance, which are allowed to stand by governments who fear legal reprisals. This has led to the Kafkian result…

February 14, 2023