German investigative reporter Patrizia Schlosser is a new guest of Protagonista podcast.
Her reporting delves into neo-Nazi networks, far-left Red Army Faction extremists and the dark online economies built on revenge and deepfake porn.
Watch the full episode: buff.ly/Pjkbe3z
In 2024, the teams from GLEIF, @openownership.bsky.social and @opensanctions.org demonstrated how high-quality legal entity, beneficial ownership and sanctions data can show sanctions propagating through an ownership network using the example of a sanctioned Iranian bank transparencyfabric.gleif.org
02.03.2026 15:48 — 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
I realize that marketing campaigns are planned out months in advanced, but maybe it’s not a good time for a nationwide bakery to market #Dubai chocolate Bundt cake.
02.03.2026 15:51 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0When you put it like this, a $75 million bribe to Melania and gutting the Washington Post seems like a small price to pay.
22.02.2026 02:10 — 👍 10723 🔁 4003 💬 255 📌 95
Large scale sex trafficking and money laundering networks would not have succeeded for long without substantial corruption.
In this case, it includes hiring the US Virgin Islands governor’s wife and befriending CBP officers and former US &other politicians.
“…as his period of house arrest was coming to an end, Mr. Epstein emailed Cecile de Jongh, who was his office manager in the U.S. Virgin Islands and was the territory’s first lady. He asked who was in charge of customs, noting that an official at the St. Thomas airport “has been difficult lately...”
22.02.2026 13:22 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1
“About 3/4 of the 2.5m fed acres, known as O&C lands…are protected from regular logging. But in its notice of intent, the land management bureau indicated it could return those acres to 1960s harvest levels, at times more than 10 times average harvest levels over the last two decades.”
21.02.2026 14:38 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Don’t punish wrongdoing. Reward it. That’s how this administration works.
fortune.com/2026/02/13/b...
It's a headscratcher alright...
17.02.2026 11:27 — 👍 200 🔁 30 💬 8 📌 3
Under the order, a covered financial institution is required to identify and verify the beneficial owners of a legal entity customer in only the following circumstances:
www.fincen.gov/news/news-re...
From Wired today. AI results thingy at the top of google searches always had a lot of garbage but now it is used for scams, too. People figured out how to insert scam phone numbers into phone # searches.
Am I showing my age if I say how much I miss the days when google was a good search engine?
1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.
Hundreds of kids are still detained.
We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵
My thoughts on new US tax accounting disclosures, for @bloombergtax.com: "These new disclosures are a major improvement on what we’ve had before. The hope is that with more public scrutiny, big multinationals are less likely to play offshore tax games that put investors at risk."
09.02.2026 17:05 — 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
We still haven't solved tax havens.
"American Express lowered its corporate income taxes by $241m through operations on the island of Jersey in 2025....Without the Jersey effect, American Express's tax rate would have been 1.8% higher." via @richardrubindc.bsky.social
www.wsj.com/livecoverage...
What does it say about the state of the US and its democracy today if it plans to celebrate its 250th birthday by building a giant arch with bribe money? 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
31.01.2026 14:11 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1
“…funded with leftover private donations to his White House ballroom project, which he has said could cost about $400m. Publicly identified donors to the ballroom project, such as Amazon, Google and Lockheed Martin, collectively have billions of dollars in contracts before the administration.”
31.01.2026 14:06 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1
#FIFA seems to have a #kleptocracy problem. The last 2 x World Cups were held in highly corrupt states (#Qatar and #Russia) and part of the upcoming one will too (US). 🤔
28.01.2026 11:48 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
I study #corruption for a living and even I’m in awe at the creativity and venality of these schemes: a $1b bribe to Trump gives corrupt leaders dibs to send huge contracts to selves and cronies as part of post-genocide reconstruction. WOW 🤯
19.01.2026 13:20 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Unhinged
19.01.2026 07:02 — 👍 5900 🔁 1812 💬 621 📌 465
I wonder how #Hungarian voters feel about their #Kleptocrat Viktor Orban giving $1billion of Hungarian taxpayer money to #Trump for a seat on a board about #Gaza? Could be an interesting election issue this spring.
19.01.2026 13:07 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
It’s notable that a majority of the members of this board have either engaged in #corruption themselves of shilled for those who do. Not a good sign for good governance reforms in #Gaza, which Gaza’s people so desperately need and deserve.
17.01.2026 14:23 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
What are some #Trump insiders’ financial links with critical minerals contracts in #Greenland? A new expose’ out this morning 👇🏻
17.01.2026 12:36 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0"There is no basis in law for a president to set up an offshore account that he controls so that he can sell assets seized by the American military. That is precisely a move that a corrupt politician would be attracted to." @warren.senate.gov
16.01.2026 19:20 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0Democracy activist/scholar Srdja Popovic describes the “Maduro Model” whereby an authoritarian (or wanna be one) is willing to even risk crashing their economy to stay in power. Read more about it here: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
12.01.2026 02:24 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
A huge shoutout to the folks at Citizen Historians for taking pictures of all exhibits at the Smithsonian—including at the National Portrait Gallery—so we have a historical record of what had been there before. Read more about the remarkable volunteers here:
www.citizenhistorians.org
Wise advice for today: “Yes, he was indoctrinated,” Dr. Matthäus said of Mr. Onnen [the murderer]. “But what is probably more important is that you are part of a machine, and if you don’t make a deliberate decision to get out of it, you get further drawn into this.”
01.01.2026 13:44 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0And finally, one book was banned simply for being “mind numbing.” I bet my students wish they could ban some of my class readings for that reason. 🤓
29.12.2025 14:51 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Given how nasty, brutish, and short life in Afghanistan is, Thomas Hobbes’ #Leviathan is also banned. How says the Taliban don’t do irony?
29.12.2025 14:48 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Side note: Trump Part I tried to tie security guarantees & using contractors for natural resource deals in AFG, foreshadowing such deals today in Ukraine, Congo, and Gaza. Read about it here:
www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/w...
Studying the Afghan mining laws is also banned. Both the US-backed Afghan govt & the Taliban largely financed themselves with mining and quarrying; China, Russia, Iran & US also exploited mining contracts in their latest “Great Game” there.
29.12.2025 14:36 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0