The Crime-Fighting Power of Cross-Border Investigative Journalism | Bektour Iskender | TED

What makes organized crime strong?

It is very well-connected across borders.

Criminal leaders can cooperate over long distances,

build efficient logistics

and hide their wealth across many jurisdictions.

How do we know about this?

One of the reasons is journalists.

We are often the first ones

to reveal the enormous schemes of organized crime networks.

At some point, journalists started connecting across borders, too.

During the last decade,

there was a number of groundbreaking, cross-border investigations

that had dozens of media organizations working together.

“Panama Papers” is probably one of the most famous

of such cross-border journalism collaborations.

It had more than 100 media working on it;

it affected countries on every continent.

More importantly, it led to more than one billion dollars

to be recovered to the economies of the countries they were stolen from.

Now let’s take a look at maps that show which countries were featured

in three major global investigations from 2016 to 2021.

So this is “Panama Papers,”

“Paradise Papers,”

“Pandora Papers.”

As you can see, some countries keep being blank spots on these maps,

and one of them is Kyrgyzstan,

my home country.

And does it mean there is no organized crime in Kyrgyzstan

or maybe no corruption?

No way.

There is a lot of corruption in my country,

and organized crime is a pretty powerful force.

Kyrgyzstan was just not covered in major global investigations

for a very long time.

I’m one of the founders of Kloop,

a very unusual media organization

that I co-founded in Kyrgyzstan back in 2007 with my friend, Rinat.

Initially it was just a news website and a journalism school.

We would train journalists as young as 15 or 16

to cover politics,

human rights violations

and many, many other stories that happened in our country.

Throughout the years our journalists grew up,

and by the time they were in their early 20s,

they thought they were too experienced to just cover daily news.

They wanted to take on more involved stories,

and they were eager to make a difference in Kyrgyzstan.

So we started publishing bigger investigations

with our young and engaged journalists,

but there were some difficulties though.

In some cases, we did not have enough resources or experience

to work on very complicated stories,

and sometimes it was just too scary.

For example, once we even received a death threat

for trying to investigate criminal activities of the then-president’s son.

And the problem was we didn’t know who could protect us,

and we eventually had to drop this investigation.

But then something important happened in 2017

when we joined the network of OCCRP,

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

It is an organization based in Bosnia.

It was initially formed to unite the best investigative media outlets

from the Balkans,

and later it expanded its network to many other countries in Europe

and then to Central Asia,

Middle East, Africa, Latin America.

And the goal of this organization is in its name:

to fight organized crime and corruption with journalism.

We were the first Central Asian member of this network,

and oh, how many changes it has brought.

We turned Kyrgyzstan from a blank spot on the map

into a country where organized crime and corruption are investigated

as never before.

In 2019, we joined our efforts with OCCRP and also with Radio Liberty,

a media organization based in Czech Republic,

and Bellingcat, an Investigative Center from the UK.

And together we published a series of investigations

about an underground cargo empire.

A secretive family clan that transported goods from China to Central Asia

and didn’t pay all the taxes and tariffs,

if you know what I mean.

In order to do that,

they bribed the Kyrgyzstan Customs Service,

and a significant chunk of this bribe went to this person:

Raimbek Matraimov,

the Deputy Head of Kyrgyzstan’s Customs.

Our investigations revealed

that even high-ranking officials in Kyrgyzstan are involved in corruption,

poisoning their whole institutions with the worst possible practices.

People in Kyrgyzstan were outraged when they read this,

and this led to an unprecedented chain reaction.

So first there were protests in Kyrgyzstan

because of what was published in the investigation itself.

A year later, in 2020, even larger protests happened

when some of the politicians who were featured in our investigations

had their party taking second place in the Parliament elections.

As a result of these larger protests,

Parliament election results were annulled,

government was changed

and eventually the president of the country was forced to resign.

(Applause)

But this investigation was important not only for Kyrgyzstan.

Remember I told you about this family clan

that started this scheme in the first place?

They earned a lot of money in Central Asia.

We revealed and had evidence of at least 800 million dollars

that went through their business,

and the real figure might be even higher.

And where exactly did they spend their money?

Well, they bought this house in Los Angeles, California,

and this mansion in the UK;

they started a construction project in Augsburg, Germany;

they bought many apartments in Dubai.

In other words,

there is probably no such thing as local organized crime investigation.

Because of how organized crime is structured,

almost every investigative story about it has at least a regional significance,

and in many cases it has a global significance.

So now there are several messages that I want to deliver today.

Message number one:

journalism networks are actually very efficient and important.

You don’t need 100 media organizations for every investigation.

You know, like in our case, we only had four,

and it was already a huge game-changer.

And for local media organizations like Kloop,

this is also a safety measure.

As I mentioned before,

working on investigations alone is scary.

Within our network we not only share knowledge or resources,

but we also care about each other, and we keep each other secure.

Message number two:

support local media organizations all around the world.

When global journalism collaborations first began,

it was mostly media from Europe or the Americas

that would have a leading role

as they had the greatest resources.

But media organizations from other continents are very important too.

We have unique expertise, insights and connections.

Before I move to the third and final message,

I want to share something personal with you.

Last year I moved to Ukraine

because Kloop planned to start a new regional media project there,

and we are now forced to do it in another country

because this man was belligerent enough to invade Ukraine,

the country that became my second home.

But I want to highlight a role of another country in this war:

Belarus.

Belarus is very corrupt.

It has been run by Alyaksandr Lukashenka,

a dictator that has been ruling this country since the 1990s.

Lukashenka did something unthinkable.

He provided the territory of Belarus to the Russian army

to attack Ukraine from the north.

One of the similarities between Belarus and Kyrgyzstan

is that both our countries are small

and get little attention from global media.

At the same time,

for decades, local media in Belarus did not have enough resources

or safety measures to thoroughly investigate Lukashenka

and corrupt officials around him.

The thing is, Lukashenka is not really a super powerful leader

of global magnitude.

Unlike Putin, he could [have been] weakened years ago.

What helped him stay in power was massive pressure on civil society,

on local media

and lack of financial measures from other countries.

If the global community took stronger action against Lukashenka,

if local media were stronger and better linked with global networks,

I believe Russia could have lost its key ally a long, long time ago.

A better-timed collaborative journalism investigation could save many lives.

So here I come to my final message.

Let's leave criminals and corrupt officials without access to their money

before it’s [too late].

This is where journalists need help from activists,

politicians

and even bankers,

not just from each other.

We must expand our cross-border networks outside of the media world too,

because every exposed, corrupt official,

every arrested organized crime leader

is a chance to protect our world not only from smugglers and thieves,

but also from dictators and warmongers.

Thank you.

(Applause and cheers)