St. Lucia signed contracts with investors, which could have potentially translated into tens of thousands of citizenships, including with a company linked to a Montenegro businessman who was shortly thereafter arrested on allegations that he was part of a tobacco smuggling ring.
#DueDiligence
On that note, the UK home office just revoked visa-free access to St. Lucians citing a threat to border security posed by its Citizenship by Investment programme
#CitizenshipByInvestment
www.gov.uk/government/n...
It was great to work with Michela and the brilliant Behind the Money team this week to share our reporting on ICE.
Find it in your podcast app below:
This post is the single best advert for the fact that proper local journalism matters.
If Jim’s team hadn’t put the pieces together quickly, this wouldn’t have been stopped.
Woken up to lots of unhappy messages about us keeping on this story
Sorry but if a political org - run by a now Minister - hires private intel to smear journalists then takes these baseless smears to security services, I will investigate it.
And keep investigating until accountability happens
Internal bank documents show the scale of secret shareholdings in India’s Adani, at the very moment Hindenburg accused it of “brazen market manipulation”
An FT and OCCRP collab.
as.ft.com/r/eb906e00-d...
🚨 Cabinet Office investigating Labour Together and Josh Simons over campaign to smear journalists
But...ministers overseeing inquiry have received £150,000+ from Labour think tank
Experts and MPs demand 'full independent investigation'
New on D4S: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/revealed-g... 🧵
Tens of thousands of "golden passports", a movie producer turned sleuth, and the Chinese-owned company building a jail in the Caribbean www.ft.com/content/7767... "The total number of citizenship by investment citizens likely surpasses the native population of St Kitts and Nevis".
UK to ban political party donations from foreign-owned companies ft.trib.al/9IPn1l3
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... “Epstein got away with his crimes because nearly every element of society allowed him to get away with them.”
Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons commissioned PR firm to investigate journalists and their sources
Why? Because they were digging into the dark money behind Labour Together, and Keir Starmer's rise
Me on D4S, on why our revelations matter so much: democracyforsale.substack.com/p/labour-tog...
That @petergeoghegan.bsky.social is onto something here and he's not letting go of it open.substack.com/pub/democrac...
Ariane de Rothschild ousted her husband as CEO of his family’s storied bank, negotiated a big DOJ settlement and examined several mergers
Behind every move was none other than Jeffrey Epstein, who had found his backdoor into one of Europe’s most powerful banking dynasties
www.ft.com/content/0d70...
www.ft.com/content/8b04... Epstein helped Ian Osborne establish Hedosophia, one of London’s most secretive technology funds
“In the past two years, Florida has passed AI laws that outlaw artificially-generated sexual images and require disclaimers on political advertisements that use AI.”
Yes, please, for the sake our our children.
“DeSantis is pushing for a sweeping “AI Bill of Rights” that would force AI companies to implement parental controls, restrict the use of personal data by chatbots and give residents more power to block the construction of data centres.”
as.ft.com/r/3152dedf-7... Ron DeSantis lashes out at ‘harmful’ AI in break with Trump’s White House
The Epstein rot goes deep “Having been invited in 2010 to an Epstein dinner with Woody Allen and then Prince Andrew in New York, the magazine editor, Tina Brown, replied: “What the fuck is this . . .? The paedophile’s ball?” as.ft.com/r/9fb21859-9...
Let’s try this one in foreign correspondent voice:
State Security Forces Arrest Journalist Who Covered Protests Against Regime Official
Worth noting that the fee for accessing information on the Cayman Islands beneficial ownership search platform by a licensed financial institution or a designated non-financial business or profession is set at $1500 USD per user per year
as.ft.com/r/67e1bbe6-8... Jeffrey Epstein sent thousands of pounds to Peter Mandelson’s husband, emails show
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/u...
"They are going to carry guns and use cars as weapons, then they run the risk of getting killed", Mrs Lipinski,62, said."
1. Read the first amendment of the US Constitution
2. Read the second amendment
3. Read the 10 commandments (from murder to lying)
Then ponder.
as.ft.com/r/1e92e5b2-a... Trump’s ‘New Gaza’ vision contrasts with the devastation on the ground
“…a bombed-out wasteland where Israel continues to restrict essential goods, babies die of hypothermia and Israeli troops open fire on Gazans almost every day”
as.ft.com/r/1e542082-6... Anthropic doubles VC fundraising to $20bn on surging investor demand
www.ft.com/content/c309...
"Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it."
Uhm, it is very clear that they do not possess the maturity. Just look at social media.
Nigel Farage attended Davos on a pass sponsored by the family office of Iranian billionaire Sasan Ghandehari, which told the World Economic Forum that the Reform UK leader had advised the company since 2018. ft.trib.al/V138xDu
This is one of the strangest and most screwed-up stories I’ve worked on. www.londoncentric.media/p/tiktok-lon...
So with all these Tories defecting to Reform, those voting for Reform because they’re disillusioned with the Tories will still end up voting for Tories (newly relabelled as Reform politicians) after all. 🤭
Actually…
I know. I was joking. ;)
