Welcome back!
Time flies, doesn’t it? It’s been just three months since we published the FinCEN Files, establishing how banks have helped facilitate mass-scale money laundering and how national regulators have failed to reign in the criminals or the financial institutions that serve them.
In that short time, FinCEN Files has already driven anti-corruption reforms around the globe and continues to be a powerful tool in the international fight for transparency and accountability.
While the exposé roiled the financial industry like few stories since the Great Recession, autocratic regimes and criminals — long accustomed to keeping their financial dealings secret — have lashed out.
We teamed up with our partners at BuzzFeed News to chronicle how the world – from governments to regulators to the banking industry itself – has responded. See our roundup on the impact in the U.S., Liberia, Thailand, Belgium, the U.K., the European Union and more.
THE GREATEST BLOW YET?
Luanda Leaks showed how Angola’s largest mobile phone provider Unitel became a cash cow for Isabel dos Santos when she was chair of the company. Unitel is now suing for the repayment of $430 million in loans it says were used to fund a shopping spree of telecom companies across the Lusophone world.
RARE FRAUD ALERT
A U.S. watchdog agency is urging the medical industry to reconsider resuming the longstanding, multi-billion dollar practice of paying doctors to promote products while such events are mostly on pause due to COVID-19. The Implant Files investigation zeroed in on the role of such financial enticements in influencing physicians to put flawed implantable products into patient bodies with little evidence of safety or effectiveness.
We’ll be taking a week off from the newsletter and wish you all a safe and happy end to 2020! Thanks for sticking with us through such an impactful year! There’s still time to get in your end-of-year donation to help us unlock $90,000 in matching funds. We’re so close to reaching our goal of raising $180,000 to start 2021 strong!
Our team and network of global partners have a lot of plans to keep investigating the most important stories in the world in the new year, and your support is key to that effort.
Thanks for reading!
Asraa Mustufa
ICIJ's digital editor
P.S. If you've enjoyed our coverage this week, remember to tell your friends and family and share our work on social media. Send them an email now!
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