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For years, authorities shut the door. So we wrote a guide to opening it.

Alexander Fanta, Simon Van Dorpe, Peter Teffer — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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For years, authorities shut the door. So we wrote a guide to opening it.

A new guide – composed by yours truly – will advise journalists across Europe how they can use freedom of information laws to uncover crucial and otherwise untold stories. It details how to file requests, which pieces of legislation journalists can rely on to do so, and where to turn for help if they are ignored (as they so often are).

Covering 39 European countries and the European Union itself, the manual is a labour of love. And a public service: after years of frustration with denied requests and limited guidance on accessing public information, 46 journalists, academics, and freedom of information advocates, including ourselves at Follow the Money, took matters into our own hands. A first edition was published last week by Arena for Journalism.

Freedom of information (FOI) is a vital tool for cross-border collaborations. Take the Bad Practice investigation. It was coordinated by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and joined by FTM. It investigated problematic cases of doctors losing their medical licence in one country, but continuing to practice in another. Without several FOI disclosure requests in different countries, the probe wouldn’t have been possible. Another major investigation – the Forever Pollution project – tracked the spread of harmful “forever chemicals” like PFAS throughout the bloc. It also exposed lobbying by corporations that tried (and largely succeeded) to thwart regulation against it. This is yet another example of an important investigation that relied heavily on documents disclosed under FOI.

We hope that the guide will make it easier for individual journalists to reach out to authorities in different countries and file requests independently across the continent. Many EU countries have strong legislation that can be easily used by journalists to obtain information that may be restricted in their own country.

What we want even more is for FOI to become an everyday investigative tool, so that a closed door in one country doesn’t end the pursuit of truth.

Check out the guide here.

Alexander Fanta

Other news from the EU bubble

Did von der Leyen and Vance strike a tech deal? We’ll soon find out

The EU’s General Court is set to hear a case about an alleged secret deal between Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and US vice president JD Vance. The case was brought by German social democrat MEP Tiemo Wölken, and will be heard in Luxembourg on 19 November. Wölken alleges that the Commission retracted a legal proposal that would have made it cheaper for European companies to licence US technology – (which was strongly opposed by US tech firms) – after a backroom deal following a meeting between von der Leyen and Vance last year. Wölken hopes a court ruling under the EU’s FOI law could uncover emails and texts that would explain how the EU ended up retracting the patents proposal.

Alexander Fanta

Controversial Romanian firm raided in NATO bribery crackdown

Romanian company Global Defence Logistics (GDL), which offers services for military ships and aircraft, was one of several firms raided on Thursday. According to Romanian media reports, this was part of a pan-European investigation into fraudulent invoices and bribery of foreign public officials.

Earlier that day, Eurojust, the bloc’s agency for criminal justice cooperation, announced that it had coordinated searches in Norway, Romania, and Germany. This probe concerns husbandry services – such as refuelling, repairs, and waste management – provided to NATO military vessels during port visits in north-western Europe.

Security and Defence

Europe is investing heavily to ramp up its security. FTM takes a close look at how the money is being spent.

Last year, we reported that the US had suddenly dropped a bribery case into two Greek GDL executives, one of which was subsequently released from a Romanian prison. The executives had been caught paying €130,000 in cash to a NATO official, allegedly to secure a major husbandry contract. Another case into largely the same allegations was opened by the Romanian anti-corruption prosecutor service and remains ongoing, a spokesperson for the agency confirmed to FTM in July.

Simon Van Dorpe

Dude, where’s my money?

It’s not looking good for the 200 or so companies and startups that are still owed EU grant money from the French non-profit EIT Manufacturing. This intermediary organisation filed for liquidation in March, after the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) suspended payments following reports about “serious irregularities”. In a letter to beneficiaries seen by FTM, the French liquidator said it had been trying for months to persuade the EIT to find a way to pay them. But the EIT continued to refuse, arguing the EU is not liable for agreements the independent EIT Manufacturing made with beneficiaries. The liquidator ended the letter saying the EIT’s unmoving position gave no clear resolution in sight.

Peter Teffer

Our recent publications

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European countries spend at least €1.4 billion on ‘dangerous’ Palantir

Despite controversy after controversy, Europe is still signing deals with Palantir, worth hundreds of millions. Security experts warn they’re taking a dangerous gamble.

The tech giant faces scrutiny over its role in the US immigration agency ICE’s crackdowns, its work with the Israeli military, and allegations linking its technology to the bombing of a girls’ school in Iran. Which European governments are in bed with the firm, and why?

Trump wants Europe to pay more for medicines. Why is Big Pharma worried?

Donald Trump wants Europe to pay more for medicines for a simple reason: so Americans can pay less. But his plan threatens to have the exact opposite effect. Pharmaceutical companies are considering not releasing medicines in Europe at all. One expert calls the policy “monstrosity”.

Read the investigation

Revealed: Ships transporting military cargo carry passengers with Russian identities that are likely fake

Jesse Pinster, Monica Matin — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Dozens of passengers with apparent fake identities have been travelling to Africa on cargo ships loaded with military vehicles for the past two years, a joint investigation of FTM and media partners has found.

Most of the vessels shipped military equipment to Russian state-controlled Africa Corps, the successor to private mercenary group Wagner.

“[Using fake passports] helps people … hide military or intelligence ties [and] protect the groups that recruit and pay them,” said Nadina Ronc, an analyst specialist in Russian foreign affairs and security policy. “The goal is not just to hide one person, but to make it harder to trace the chain of command, funding, and state involvement in an operation.”

“Usually people without any other hits are my [Russian] colleagues”

In total, FTM, together with media partners Dossier Center, Danwatch, Delfi, and Süddeutsche Zeitung, identified 28 people who seem to be travelling on fake identities on seven Russian cargo ships. At least six of the vessels were transporting military equipment.

Dossier Center reviewed hundreds of passenger data, listed in confidential documents since late 2024 and identified the 28 people by reviewing data available on leaks: none of them show up in any of the hundreds of leaks of personal data and government portals the team of journalists who worked on this investigation have access to. None of them have bought a ticket for a plane, train, long-distance bus or ferry in Russia, and none of them had any car insurance in their name.

A European intelligence officer said he believed that this was an intelligence operation. Referring to his counterparts in Russia, he said: “Usually people without any other hits [in databases and leaks] are my colleagues. It would be uncommon for anyone else to use such false ID-s.”

Going to Togo

One of the vessels that carried fake passengers on board was the Mikhail Britnev, a Russian cargo ship loaded with military vehicles.

The vehicles were to be sent to Russian fighters in Mali in western Africa. Russia is active in several African countries, including in Mali. There, the military regime – which came to power after a coup in 2021 – pushed out French and United Nations forces. Russia stepped in, supplying fighters and weapons. They are fighting a civil war against the Tuareg separatists, who want more autonomy or even independence, and several insurgent groups with links to Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.

The ship seems to have been crucial to the Russian state: it was escorted by a Russian warship, according to the Royal Navy and several investigations, including by the BBC and France24.

Maxim Mineev, Vladimir Menshov, Alexander Zakharov, and Mikhail Kovalev were on board the Mikhail Britnev when it left the port of Kaliningrad – a Russian enclave squished between Poland and Lithuania – on 18 June 2026.

Satellite image of the ship Mikhail Britnev in Kaliningrad.

A two-and-a-half week journey would take them through the Danish Straits, the North Sea and English Channel all the way to a port in West Africa.

The four Russians were listed as the only passengers, according to maritime documents seen by FTM.

The problem: their identities seem to be fake.

The information indicated in the maritime data is not in any of the leaks. The data includes their birthdates, passport numbers, and middle names, which makes it possible to rule out other people with the same first and last name. The passports used by the 28 people on the ships are non-biometric, making them easier to forge.

“I believe it’s more than likely an intelligence operation”

Over the last three years, more than 4.5 billion records with personal information of Russian citizens were hacked and put online, according to cybersecurity firm Infowatch. Data from every person in the country has been leaked by now, the president of state-owned telecom giant Rostelecom has said.

The media consortium shared the names with analysts from US-based global security nonprofit C4ADS. The analysts reviewed the list of names and equally found that the individuals’ details, as portrayed in the data, were likely fabricated.

Stiig Waever, a former intelligence officer in the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) came to the same conclusion after being presented with the findings.

Security and Defence

Europe is investing heavily to ramp up its security. FTM takes a close look at how the money is being spent.

“My assessment is that it’s most likely false identities,” he said. “It’s very unlikely a private shipping company would have people on board who are impossible to find.”

The real identity of the travellers is impossible to establish – but, according to analyst Ronc, they were likely former Wagner group members, military or intelligence-linked personnel or contractors, or security and logistics specialists who support Russia’s operations in Africa.

“A contractor or former soldier might also use an assumed identity to conceal their deployment history, employer, or connections to a sanctioned organisation,” she said.

Former intelligence officer Waever went a step further and said that the people could have a link to Russia’s intelligence services, given the link to Africa Corps.

“I believe it’s more than likely an intelligence operation,” he said.

“Typically you work under false identity in order to collect intel, infiltrate, or create networks which grant you access to a larger platform of information. This could be relevant to both Russia’s political and intelligence operation,” he said. “You typically gather intel to make better assessments and judgements on how to make future operations more effective.”

Satellite image of the ship Mikhail Britnev in Togo.

The Mikhail Britnev ship seemed to be intent on not only concealing the identity of some of its passengers – it also obscured its travel path.

Just after leaving the English Channel, it turned off its radio signal – making it impossible to track its real-time location, speed, and course. This method to hide vessels is illegal.

But a few weeks after it started its journey, in the very early morning of 9 July, the ship arrived in the port of Lome in Togo, satellite images confirm. From there, equipment to support fighters in Mali could be transported over land, crossing Burkina Faso – a country with close ties to Russia.

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By engaging in those conflicts, Ronc said, Russia was “seeking status, leverage, and resources”.

“This brings in money and creates ties that increase Moscow’s influence,” she said.

The Russian defence ministry, the companies who own the vessels, the captains of the vessels, and Togolese authorities did not reply to requests for comment.

Russia’s military network

The Mikhail Britnev is not the only ship FTM and its partners identified that carried both military equipment and passengers with apparent fake identities.

Two ships – the Adler and the Siyanie Severa – arrived in Guinea in January 2025. Both ships delivered almost 100 tanks and armored vehicles that were then sent via land to Mali, French newspaper Le Monde reported.

“Russia could wage its campaigns under the guise of deniability”

The first vessel carried six people with apparent fake identities, the second – as far as could be established – one. Like with the Mikhail Britnev, no other passengers were on board.

Another vessel – the Sabetta – took a similar route: it started in Kaliningrad and docked in the Guinean port in March 2026, from where dozens of military vehicles were transported to Mali.

In Mali, the vehicles are used to support the Russia-controlled Africa Corps.

Armored vehicle being unloaded in Guinean port in the spring of 2026. Picture taken by a confidential source.

That group took over operations of the Wagner group in late 2023 and early 2024. Like the Wagner Group, Africa Corps has been accused of human rights abuses.

The United Nations Human Rights Council is “extremely concerned by the high number and seriousness of violations of human rights or international humanitarian law” by Mali’s defence forces and their foreign partners. Human Rights Watch reported about a massacre that took place in a Malian village where fighters from the Africa Corps killed nine people, including four children, in July.

Previously, the Kremlin had denied being involved in Africa Corps’ predecessor Wagner group – but both the US government and the European parliament have said it was a Kremlin-coordinated operation. Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted in 2023 that the Wagner group was financed by the Russian defence ministry.

Still, Russian authorities treated the group as a private military organisation that wasn’t connected to the government itself and denied responsibility for alleged atrocities committed by it, security analyst Ronc said.

“Russia could wage its campaigns under the guise of deniability,” she said.

Now that Africa Corps has replaced Wagner in large parts, that pretext fell.

“The deniability is no longer plausible,” she said.

European countries spend at least €1.4 billion on ‘dangerous’ Palantir

Sebastiaan Brommersma — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This article in one minute

What’s the news?

At least 11 European countries have signed contracts at the national level with the controversial American technology company Palantir.
In eight of these countries, the armed forces use the company’s software, and in five countries, the national police do so.

Why does it matter?

Palantir plays a key role in crucial aspects of these countries’ digital infrastructure, and in Europe as a whole.
Experts describe this dependence as problematic, partly due to the political views of Palantir’s management and the company’s close ties to US President Donald Trump’s America First movement.

How was this investigated?

Led by Follow the Money, journalists from 18 countries surveyed governments that had entered into partnerships with Palantir. These included the governments not only of EU nations but also of the UK and Israel.
Reporters drew on public sources, submitted questions and – on occasion – made requests under freedom of information acts.
Follow the Money discussed the findings of this survey with various experts in the fields of political science, economics and warfare.
International partners from De Tijd (Belgium), Børsen (Denmark), Der Standard (Austria), Republik (Switzerland), WAV Recherchekollektiv (Switzerland), Morgenbladet (Norway), The Nerve (United Kingdom), El País (Spain), Netzpolitik.org (Germany), Il Domani (Italy), Dagens ETC (Sweden), Siena (Lithuania), Haaretz (Israel), Telerama (France), Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), Delfi Meedia (Estonia), Inside Story (Greece) and Frontstory.pl (Poland).

This article is part of an ongoing series.

Security and Defence

This summer, Alex Karp told shareholders that Europe was lucky to have the services of his company Palantir.

“We’re supporting lots of institutions in Europe ... I mean clandestine institutions,” the controversial CEO and co-founder of tech giant Palantir said. “Without our products, they’d have rampant terrorism and their problems – their migration problems – and the results would be ten times worse.”

Palantir does not disclose who its European clients are, what they purchase, or to what extent they are dependent on those products.

But research by journalists from 18 countries reveals that Palantir has offices in 14 European countries, including the United Kingdom, and does business with national governments – ministries, armed forces, and national police forces – in at least 11 of them.

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The company also has an office in Israel and Palantir works closely with the Israeli army.

The figures cited cause concern among experts. They describe Europe’s reliance on Palantir for parts of its digital infrastructure as “dangerous”.

‘US warfighters above everything’

Palantir poses a threat, experts say, because of the company’s connection to the White House, and the anti-democratic ideology of Karp and his co-founder Peter Thiel.

Since its foundation in 2003, Palantir has been intertwined with the US intelligence services and the Pentagon, but after Donald Trump’s return to the White House in 2025, the ties between the company and the US government became closer than ever.

Palantir secured billions of dollars’ worth of government contracts in the US for software used, among other things, to implement Trump’s MAGA policy through the immigration agency ICE and the war in Iran.

Security and Defence

Europe is investing heavily to ramp up its security. FTM takes a close look at how the money is being spent.

In Iran, the company has been linked to a bombing of a girls’ school, in which more than 120 children were killed because the army’s targeting software was not up to date.

In public statements, Palantir and Karp make no secret of the fact that they want to make America the dominant power in the world. This year Karp said that, in the event of capacity issues, his company would always “prioritise US warfighters above everything else”.

Palantir’s tools

Palantir’s tools are designed to link large amounts of data from various sources, make it searchable, and analyse and present it in such a way as to reveal connections that would otherwise have remained hidden.

Palantir’s best-known tools are Gotham and Foundry. Foundry makes it easier to manage work processes in the commercial sector, while Gotham is specifically designed for law enforcement, defence and intelligence.

Another well-known product is the MAVEN Smart System.

This serves as the US Army’s central software platform and was also acquired by NATO in March 2025.

NATO uses MAVEN as a central command system to ensure, amongst other things, that member states’ weapon systems communicate quickly and effectively during military operations. The system was awarded the highest security accreditation and runs on the part of NATO’s network that carries classified information.

MAVEN can process large amounts of data from satellites, drones, cameras, sensors, weather systems, telephone calls, and countless other sources almost in real time to locate and take out targets.

The system can carry out this process almost entirely autonomously. It identifies targets, devises a plan of attack, checks weapon stocks and – following human intervention in the form of a press of a button – neutralises opponents: “find, fix, finish”, in military jargon.

According to the CEO of Palantir UK, Louis Mosley, NATO utilises this capability.

‘Woefully naive’

In eight of the 11 European countries where Palantir operates at national level, the ministry of defence and/or the armed forces are clients of the company. These include countries such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain.

The United Kingdom is by far Palantir’s largest market outside the United States. According to the journalism platform The Nerve, between 2012 and 2025 the company secured contracts worth nearly one billion pounds there with organisations including the Ministry of Defence, the National Health Service (NHS), the nuclear agency, and the financial regulator.

Security experts described the idea that the sensitive data involved in these deals would be secure as “woefully naive”.

Many of these European countries are also part of military alliances, such as NATO and the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF).

Because Palantir’s software is deployed within these alliances, some countries automatically make use of it – even if they do not have direct contracts with Palantir.

The Dutch ministry of defence uses both Gotham and Foundry to manage, execute and evaluate classified military operations carried out by the country’s special operations forces. Within the NATO framework, the Dutch ministry of defence deploys MAVEN to enable the interoperability of weapon systems during military missions.

Palantir’s software therefore processes highly sensitive information. In June, FTM revealed that, despite security measures, company employees had access to this classified data.

The national police forces in at least five countries use Gotham: Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark. In Germany and the United Kingdom, the police use the software at federal or regional levels.

The Danish national police force uses Gotham under the name Pol-Intel and has even extended its use to Greenland, as discovered by the Danish newspaper Børsen.

This Greenland roll-out came at precisely the moment that Trump was calling for the US to annex the autonomous territory. The call prompted the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) to label the US as a threat.

Earlier this month, the Danish news outlet Altinget reported that, due to the US threat and the close ties between Palantir and the White House, the Danish army had been instructed to halt the advanced talks on the purchase of MAVEN and to focus on a European alternative – despite the recent deal between the US, Greenland and Denmark.

According to Intelligence Online, the Danish intelligence services were considering discontinuing the use of Palantir’s Gotham for the same reasons at the end of last year.

Intelligence services in Ukraine, France and the United Kingdom also use Palantir software.

Monitoring Ukrainians

Palantir’s European operations are not limited to the law enforcement and security sectors.

In Lithuania, the state data agency has in recent years signed contracts with the company with a value that could go over €67 million.

We know that Palantir develops close ties with government officials wherever it goes

Through this contract, the software is used by Lithuanian customs, among other bodies of government. In Norway, customs are so pleased with Palantir that the existing contract, which was due to expire in 2025, has been extended until 2030.

In Ukraine, alongside the army and the military security service, the ministry of digital transformation and the public prosecutor’s office also use Palantir’s software.

The Polish ministries of family, labour and social policy, and home affairs engaged the company from 2022 to 2025, among other things, to record the movements and whereabouts of Ukrainian refugees – including minors – who had fled to Poland.

Previously, a Palantir spokesperson confirmed to Follow the Money that the company’s software was used to support the resettlement of Ukrainian refugees in various European countries.

The media partners’ survey found, meanwhile, that contact between Palantir and European governments occurred with striking frequency in the aftermath of a disaster.

In France, for example, the company gained a foothold following the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, and its collaboration with the UK’s NHS and the Lithuanian state data agency came about around the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

€1.4 billion

The British government, Palantir’s biggest customer in Europe, has spent a total of some £992 million on the software. But millions are also being spent elsewhere.

In Lithuania, various contracts the government has signed with the company are set to be worth more than €67 million by 2031. In Germany, the figure spent on the use of the software is between €47 and €86 million.

In Norway, the police and customs authorities have so far paid a combined total of 555 million Norwegian kroner (€52 million) to the company, and the Danish police have paid over 211 million Danish kroner (€28 million). The Spanish Ministry of Defence spent €16.5 million on Palantir, while its Italian counterpart spent €6.2 million.

Millions also flowed to Palantir from Brussels. Europol, which used Gotham between 2012 and 2021 for – amongst other things – operational analyses and data visualisations, paid more than €4 million. According to a spokesperson, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency transferred €4.7 million between 2017 and 2023.

At today’s exchange rates, the total amount that these authorities collectively paid to Palantir therefore amounts to €1.4 billion.

The actual figure is higher, as the governments of some countries, including the Netherlands and Sweden, are unwilling to comment on this matter.

Setbacks

Despite CEO Karp’s claim that without Palantir’s products, countries would have “rampant terrorism”, many nations have declined the services of the US company.

Palantir’s attempts to sell its software to the Austrian ministry of defence came to nothing – despite a pilot project in 2018 – the Austrian outlet Der Standard reported. Nor did the country’s ministry of the interior make a deal, despite repeated attempts.

The same applied to the Israeli Defence Forces, the notorious Israeli intelligence unit Unit 8200, and the Shin Bet security service. According to the Israeli newspaper Globes, despite Palantir’s close ties with the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), the services decided after a trial not to enter into a partnership with the company.

It’s dangerous that their software ... is embedded deep within the fabric of our society

The Swiss army repeatedly rejected the company’s advances, as revealed by the Swiss investigative platform Republik in late 2025 on the basis of internal documents. There were not only ethical objections – the risks of dependency and the leakage of government data to the US government were also deemed too great.

In Germany, the head of the Bundeswehr’s Cyber and Information Space Command told Handelsblatt in April that the country’s army should not do business with the company at all. This was to prevent Palantir employees from gaining access to sensitive defence data.

Despite its recently opened office in Brussels, Palantir has not received a warm welcome from the Belgian government either. In June, the Belgian ministers of defence and foreign affairs told parliament they do not do business with Palantir and have no plans to do so.

The country’s federal police had already taken a similar stance.

The Belgian ministers did not give a formal reason, but it can be inferred from their written statements to parliament, seen by Follow the Money, that the importance of European digital sovereignty carries significant weight.

‘Unacceptable point of weakness’

A desire for digital autonomy is prompting some governments to review their ties with Palantir.

In June, the French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu announced that his domestic intelligence service would not renew the contract – which had been extended as recently as December 2025 – a further time. This is to avoid strategic dependence.

Spain is following suit: the government’s only contract with Palantir is expiring at the end of this year and the government will not be renew it, media partner El Pais reported on Friday.

The Norwegian National Police also decided not to renew its contract, which is due to expire in 2027. However, according to the Morgenbladet newspaper, this was because the use of the software failed to get off the ground due to local privacy laws that prevented the integration of the necessary databases.

In the United Kingdom, several police forces have recently distanced themselves from Palantir, and the possibility of terminating the NHS’s mega-contract is being investigated.

In early October, the new prime minister, Andy Burnham, announced that he intends to replace Palantir with a home-grown alternative. A UK parliamentary committee described the growing reliance on the company as an “unacceptable point of weakness” and stated that Palantir represented a “clear mismatch” with the country’s values.

“The downside is that you make yourself increasingly dependent”

The committee also noted that, following Palantir’s public endorsement of CEO Karp’s controversial political views, the US company can no longer be regarded as apolitical.

In September, a group of more than 120 European NGOs, trade unions, and European institutions from 30 countries called on governments in an open letter to sever ties with the company. In doing so, they referred, among other things, to the issues of dependency and the allegations of human rights violations.

Nevertheless, there appears to be no sign of a radical transformation as yet.

The Polish ministry of defence signed a letter of intent with Palantir in 2025 for the development of artificial intelligence, and the Lithuanian ministry of defence signed a memorandum of understanding with the company in 2023 for a central data management platform.

Furthermore, around the time of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, the presidents of Poland and Lithuania also spoke with Karp about the possibility of turning their countries into a hub for the development of military technology and the protection of NATO’s eastern flank.

‘How far does its influence extend?’

Elke Schwarz, a professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University of London, researches the development of military artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons.

According to her, European countries’ dependence on Palantir is problematic, particularly because of its close ties to the White House.

“Certainly when it comes to national security, dependence on a company that openly states that another state – in this case the US – has undisputed priority [is a problem].”

As more government bodies in a country do business with such a company, these problems grow, Schwarz said. “The temptation is there, because the promise is that their systems work better if you link more data streams together, but the downside is that you make yourself increasingly dependent and therefore more vulnerable.”

Schwarz added: “We know that Palantir develops close ties with government officials wherever it goes.” She pointed to the large number of civil servants the company recruited in the US and the UK, after which it managed to secure contracts with their former employers. “The question then is, is Palantir able to influence decision-making this way, and if so, how far does its influence extend?”

According to Francesca Bria, this is part of a deliberate strategy. Bria is a professor at University College London and leader of the Eurostack initiative for European digital sovereignty. “By hiring former civil servants and embedding engineers within government agencies, Palantir gains control over governments’ core systems,” she said. “This creates a dependency that is almost impossible to undo.”

Bria also criticised the secrecy surrounding governments’ contracts with Palantir.

“When it comes to national security, you can’t disclose everything,” she said. “But if you’re managing a country’s critical infrastructure, you have a duty to make it clear who controls the data flowing through it, who bears ultimate responsibility, and who can shut down the system. Governments have a responsibility to their citizens, not to American oligarchs.”

According to her, the reliance on Palantir in critical infrastructure touches on a fundamental issue in particular: “A company so deeply intertwined with the US government and its mission of American supremacy is a critical component of the infrastructure of a new kind of power – one built on technology and dependence. Europe has entrusted its most sensitive systems to a company that will never put Europe's interests first.”

Bria added: “It’s dangerous that their software, of all things, is embedded deep within the fabric of our society and processes the data of millions of Europeans, while the software itself – because it’s a commercial enterprise – is not transparent. Not even to European governments. This makes democratic oversight impossible. That’s not how critical public systems are supposed to work.”

It doesn’t have to be that way, she concluded. “The countries that don’t work with Palantir and are reevaluating their position prove that Europe can do without it. Countries that do buy into it aren’t just purchasing software – they’re giving up their sovereignty.”

Rosanne Kropman and Elias Rutten contributed reporting.

Palantir’s response

Follow the Money presented the results of this investigation to Palantir and asked detailed follow-up questions on its findings.

A spokesperson for the company did not address those questions but said in a statement:

“There is a serious debate to be had about how Europe safeguards its sovereignty as technology plays an ever-greater role in our security, economies, and daily lives. But that debate should be grounded in facts.

“Technological sovereignty should ultimately be measured by who controls the data, the decisions, and the mission – not simply by the nationality of the software provider.

“Since 2011, Palantir has worked with Europe’s democratically elected governments and institutions to increase hospital capacity, speed up cancer diagnosis, safely resettle refugees, tackle organised crime, protect victims of domestic violence, and respond faster to floods and other emergencies.”

In an earlier response to Follow the Money, Palantir denied the allegations of involvement in human rights violations.

This article was updated on 15.10.2026 at 14:26 to reflect the position of the Spanish government.

Podcast | The global crackdown on dirty money is failing

Emma du Chatinier, Roel Janssen — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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Trump wants Europe to pay more for medicines. Why is Big Pharma worried?

Luciën Hordijk — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

“American patients were effectively subsidising socialist healthcare systems, in Germany, in all parts of the European Union”, Donald Trump said last year. “They are going to have to pay more for healthcare, and we are going to have to pay less.”

While the statement may have been made in the president’s typically bombastic style, it is true that in the US drug prices are three to four times higher than in other developed countries.

More than half of the global turnover of the pharmaceutical industry is generated in the United States, while 4 per cent of the world’s population lives there.

In his second term, Trump is trying to address this perceived injustice.

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One of the tools is a “Most Favored Nation” approach, whereby pharmaceutical companies are required to keep US prices for their products in line with those in similarly prosperous countries – such as Western European nations.

The Trump administration is also pressuring such companies to move production back to the United States.

But this approach – the effects of which are already being felt in Europe – could leave everyone worse off, a number of experts told Follow The Money.

If companies are obliged to adjust US prices to keep them in line with what healthcare providers elsewhere are willing to pay, they may avoid releasing them into European markets at all. This would not only harm people who need new medicines, but also hit those companies’ profits.

British pharmaceutical-market consultant Neil Grubert compared Trump’s position on medicines to his views on NATO. “Trump believes that Europe is freeloading on American research and development and is not adequately rewarding innovation.”

But the president’s suggested solution is “risky”, according to Grubert.

“There’s a risk for the Trump administration,” he said. “There’s a risk for companies. There’s a risk for healthcare systems in Europe. And above all, there’s a risk for patients.”

Profit over health

The US pharmaceutical industry itself has warned that it may make more sense to keep branded medicines out of parts of Europe than to launch them there at a lower price.

“Importing foreign prices from socialist countries would be a bad deal for American patients and workers,” an industry body said in a statement last year.

Dutch health economist Matthijs Versteegh did not mince his words when asked about the impact of the policy on the US and Europe.

“The Most Favored Nation policy is – excuse my bluntness – a monstrosity,” he said.

Versteegh said it was unlikely that European countries would suddenly agree to much higher prices, and US companies could respond by delaying their launches.

“Fewer patients will have access to certain medicines, the United States will still be paying far too much, and the pharmaceutical companies will lose revenue. The policy will then fail to meet any of its objectives,” he said.

Versteegh is also sceptical of the assumption that higher pharmaceutical revenues automatically mean more innovation.

“It strikes me that nobody thinks: ‘Perhaps the United States is simply paying far too much for its medicines,’” he said. “And that has created unrealistic turnover expectations within the industry.”

Why does the US pay so much?

Medicines cost far more in the United States than in other Western countries. The medicine Tirzepatide, to take just one example, is used to treat diabetes and obesity, and is sold by the company Eli Lilly under the brand name Mounjaro. In the US, it costs around $1,000 a month, while in most European countries it can be bought for between €250 and €400.

One reason for this discrepancy is that the US government regulates the prices of new medicines only minimally, if at all, and has for years prohibited some government programmes from negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies.

Another part of the explanation lies in the fragmented private insurance market.

Various intermediaries, known as pharmacy benefit managers, negotiate discounts with drug companies, but are not required to pass those discounts on to patients. Some patients therefore face tens of thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs for a single treatment.

The pharmaceutical lobby in Washington is, according to Trump, one of the most powerful in the country. As a result, reforms have proved difficult, even though high medicine prices have been a prominent political issue since the Obama era.

Versteegh therefore questions whether paying more for branded medicines is in fact the best way to stimulate innovation.

“We know that pharmaceutical companies reinvest only about 25 cents per euro of revenue back into research and development [R&D],” he said. “That might seem like a lot when compared to other sectors, but for a government looking for ways to drive innovation, it is actually very little. You don’t want 25 cents but a full euro going to R&D, if you decide you are investing in innovation.”

Nor does he believe that every pharmaceutical investment necessarily produces the research that people most need.

“Companies invest in the research they expect to make the most profit from,” he said. “That is by no means always the research that benefits society the most.”

230,000 unnecessary deaths

The Trump administration is pressuring European healthcare systems to pay US prices for branded drugs by threatening tariffs on medicines coming in the opposite direction.

Britain has already responded.

I’m hearing reports that [pharmaceuticals companies] are laying off their early launch teams

Last December, the British government pledged to gradually double spending on branded medicines over the next ten years, from 0.3 per cent of GDP to 0.6 per cent.

Leading health economists have calculated that the decision will result in nearly 230,000 unnecessary deaths – roughly the same as the COVID-19 pandemic – because higher spending on medicines will eat into budgets for other healthcare services.

Mainland Europe has so far resisted similar pressure. But the issue is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid.

At the end of June, it emerged that the US Trade Representative had launched a formal investigation into Germany, focusing on what it called the “persistent underpayment for innovative pharmaceutical products”.

An uneasy pharmaceutical lobby

At first sight, Trump’s demand that Western governments spend more on innovative medicines appears to be exactly what pharmaceutical companies worldwide have been asking for.

The Dutch Association for Innovative Medicines, a lobby group that represents international pharmaceutical companies, has itself argued that access to cutting-edge medical care in the Netherlands and other relatively wealthy Western nations could be improved.

The EU Files

What is transpiring within the European Union? What are the goals and aspirations of the EU, and how is the budget allocated?

“In our view, access to innovations in the Netherlands has not been entirely up to scratch for some time now,” said VIG director Carla Vos. “I hope that Trump’s MFN [Most Favored Nation] policy will spark a broader discussion about how we pursue sound industrial policy in Europe”.

But the lobby group is also concerned about what happens if Trump’s policy is fully implemented.

“This policy will undoubtedly have unintended side effects,” she said. “The uncertainty it brings is enormous.”

That uncertainty cuts directly across another idea the pharmaceutical industry has promoted: value-based pricing.

Under this model, medicines are priced partly according to the value they create for patients and society rather than simply according to what they cost to develop. In Europe, that argument is particularly visible in the prices paid for gene therapies.

Some therapies can cost nearly €2m per patient. The industry argues that this makes sense even from an economic perspective because patients who benefit may subsequently be able to work, pay taxes and avoid relying on benefits.

With Trump, focus appears to be squarely on added value for US companies and innovation, and this creates a tension for pharmaceutical companies, according to Vos.

“Our members are discussing whether to launch every product in Europe, and if so, when,” she said.

She was not able to say which companies or medicines were involved, or how far this had already gone.

Pharmaceutical-market consultant Grubert said he had heard indications that companies were preparing for the impact of Trump’s MFN.

He said: “I’m hearing reports that they are laying off their early launch teams in some cases.”

But nobody has yet confirmed this news for reasons that are clear to Grubert.

“It is very difficult for the industry to openly admit that it is no longer launching certain medicines in Europe because of the consequences for the US market,” he said.

‘Financially independent’, with a €43 million helping hand

Peter Teffer, Lise Witteman, Salsabil Fayed — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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Welcome back to Bureau Brussels – your weekly deep dive into the power plays, backroom deals, and investigations shaping life for millions of people across the bloc.

What’s in store this week?

“Financially independent” innovation bodies are set to receive another €43 million in public funding
Industry’s latest tactic: remove the evidence that could trigger EU protections
Auditors uncover more tender rule breaches in the €228 billion EU budget

STORY OF THE WEEK

‘Financially independent’, with a €43 million helping hand

What does it mean to be “financially independent”? In the European Union, apparently, it can mean receiving millions from the very institution you’re independent of.

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) funds private organisations called knowledge and innovation communities, or KICs. Before the jargon makes you click away: they’ve received €6 billion in taxpayer money since 2010, some of which critics say was wasted.

The idea was that specialised KICs could distribute grants to promising startups and stimulate innovation better than a public authority. After 15 years, they were expected to support themselves without EIT funding.

In 2024, the EIT declared that the three oldest KICs, focussed on digital, clean energy, and climate change, were “financially independent”.

So imagine our surprise when we discovered that the EIT had signed million-euro grant agreements with two of them. In the period 2026-2027, 28DIGITAL will receive €24 million and InnoEnergy €19 million.

An EIT spokesperson explained that financial independence “does not mean exclusion from further EIT funding”. Continued public support, he said, was necessary to keep the private KICs working in the public interest.

Without continued public funding, some activities benefiting the public could be scaled back or stopped. The spokesperson argued that targeted support helps preserve them and gives more people across Europe access to skills and innovation opportunities.

Just over half of the money should be spent on “entrepreneurial education”, he said. The rest supports business creation and growth, innovation in regions with weaker performance, and European networks connecting education, research, and business.

It’s easy to see why the KICs would accept the money.

28DIGITAL’s latest financial report showed that the non-profit association’s revenue dropped from €26 million in 2024 to €19 million last year. This was strongly driven by a decrease in subsidies (from €6 million to €2.5 million). While 28DIGITAL made a €1.4 million profit in 2024, it registered a €6.2 million loss in 2025. InnoEnergy hasn’t yet filed its 2025 figures. In 2024, the company reported a €52 million loss.

But the KICs denied the existence of grant agreements proved that they were relying on public support to survive.

A spokesperson for 28DIGITAL said the 2025 loss was to be expected. “It is completely normal for any organisation, from listed companies to SMEs to unicorns, to have an adjustment year after a change in business plan and strategy,” she said, adding the grant agreement showed a success story in delivering digital innovation. She added that they’re not “accepting money from anyone” and that they’re “delivering for Europe”.

An InnoEnergy spokesperson said financial independence meant it was no longer reliant on structural EIT funding. “Financially sustainable companies routinely receive grants for specific activities.”

Indeed, the EU’s funding database shows that the three so-called financially independent KICs received a total of €60 million in 2025, including from other EU institutions.

The European Commission plans to propose legislation on the future of the KICs and the EIT before the end of the year.

Peter Teffer

Other news from the EU bubble

Killing the future – the case of the precautionary principle

For decades, the (bio)chemical industries have been trying to kill Europe’s precautionary principle.

Its basic idea is simple: when there is uncertainty about risks to health or the environment, err on the side of caution.

Industry has devised various ways to weaken this basic protection. Now, it seems that instead of getting rid of the precautionary principle itself, it’s trying to get rid of the evidence that might trigger it. That’s according to Corporate Europe Observatory’s latest report.
Meanwhile, the real innovators who are developing non-chemical alternatives to pesticides are being smothered by bureaucracy. When will Europe finally learn that clinging to the old risks killing the new?

Lise Witteman

Auditors find growing tender rule breaches in €228 billion EU budget

Last week, the European Court of Auditors released its audit of the €227.8 billion EU budget for 2025. The audit is a key part of the European Parliament’s annual procedure to approve or reject how EU institutions managed their budgets.

The key takeaway: public procurement contract breaches increased from 16% in 2024 to 26% in 2025. Auditors also found familiar tactics used to bypass tender rules. For example, agencies and authorities splitting larger projects into smaller contracts under legal thresholds to avoid mandatory open tenders.

Salsabil Fayed

Our recent publications

5 years in Brussels: defying threats with more investigations

Five years ago, we set up in Brussels to hold European power to account. We’ve reported on missing billions, exposed hidden dealings that harm society, and have become a headache for the powerful. The threats and insults keep coming. So do our investigations.

For our fifth birthday, FTM’s Lise Witteman and Birte Schohaus reflect on the power we’ve challenged and what the next five years demand.

A rare insight into European Parliament expenses, thanks to a criminal ex-member

MEPs could spend €80 million on travel next year, yet taxpayers can barely scrutinise the bill. After Nathan Gill was jailed for taking pro-Russian bribes, the Parliament gave us a rare look into his expense records. Transparency advocates say it shouldn’t take a scandal to get answers, or ‘personal data’ to block them.

Podcast | Football never stopped doing business with Russia

Russia was banned from major international football competitions after invading Ukraine. But European clubs kept doing business with Russian clubs, with millions of euros changing hands. Journalist Krijn Schramade followed the money in our latest podcast.

Listen to the episode

FTM’s Brussels desk: Five years in stories

Eve Moore — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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Dear readers,

This week, we celebrated five years of holding European power to account, marking the anniversary of our Brussels desk. Since 2021, we’ve reported on missing billions, exposed hidden dealings that harm society, and become a headache for the powerful. Thanks to our readers, we’re nowhere near done getting under their skin. From corruption in public institutions to lobbying over tech and climate legislation, here are some of the stories that have defined our reporting since 2021.

5 years in Brussels: defying threats with more investigations

“Thugs.” “Bullshitters.” “Shit-stirrers.” We’ve heard it all. The insults start when our investigations force powerful people to answer questions they hoped to avoid.

In a special essay, founder and Brussels desk chief Lise Witteman and international editor-in-chief Birte Schohaus reflect on five years of reporting, at a time when democracy is under pressure and independent journalism matters more than ever. They look at why we opened our office in 2021, the threats we’ve faced, and what the next five demand.

Von der Leyen’s text messages and the fight for transparency

Just last month, the European Commission announced it would keep deleting President Ursula von der Leyen’s texts, citing security reasons, despite the European Ombudsman urging it to protect messages requested under EU freedom of information law. But if cybersecurity means wiping texts from her phone, why can’t they be stored safely elsewhere? Our fights for her Pfizer texts and her secret ‘Washington Group’ Signal chat have already led to a lawsuit and Ombudsman inquiries. Our reporting have consistently shown us that EU transparency is shrinking, and only persistent, sustained pressure will hold it open.

The EU Files

What is transpiring within the European Union? What are the goals and aspirations of the EU, and how is the budget allocated?

The Shadow Fleet Secrets: Russia’s sanctioned oil trade in the EU

Russia’s shadow fleet came under widespread scrutiny after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the EU’s subsequent sanctions on Russian oil. But something was less known at the time: European shipowners were continuing to keep it afloat and cash in billions. Our investigation, which earned the 2025 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize, revealed how Western shipowners quietly sold hundreds of old tankers into opaque networks that helped Moscow dodge sanctions. Working with 13 partner newsrooms, we traced the money, the ships, and the networks behind this dangerous trade.

Discover the stories apart of the The Shadow Fleet Secrets investigation.

US donors bankroll Europe’s policy ideas through think tanks

How ‘independent’ can Brussels-based think tanks really be when a third of their funding comes from the US? We spent a year mapping 48 of the city’s most prominent think tanks, analysing their lobbying, budgets, and media presence. In 2023 alone, US sources gave at least €115 million, with Google, Meta, and Apple among the top donors. It revealed a wider network of funders and interests shaping the EU policy debate, and raised a bigger question: who is really setting Europe’s agenda, and in whose interest?

Read the investigation and listen to the podcast about it here

Huaweigate: inside one of the biggest scandals to ever rock the European Parliament

In March 2025, FTM and partners were the first to break the bombshell news that Belgian police had raided Huawei’s EU office and the homes of its lobbyists over suspected bribery of EU lawmakers. The probe, sparked by a Belgian intelligence tip-off, became one of the year’s biggest – if not biggest – scandals in the EU and put China’s influence in Europe yet again in the spotlight. The investigation is still ongoing.

Read about Huaweigate here

EU Misconduct Investigation

The European Parliament’s recent years have drawn more attention for scandals than for lawmaking. When the bribery scandal ‘Qatargate’ shook Europe, EU lawmakers vowed to introduce better rules. FTM and a team of journalists across the bloc saw the need for a full breakdown and set out to understand the scope and core of the problems. They investigated the integrity of EU lawmakers and candidates in the 2024 EU elections, and even built a searchable database of MEPs suspected of wrongdoing.

Read the full investigation

Scandals at NATO

In October 2025, our investigation with Le Soir, La Lettre, and Knack uncovered a network of officials and consultants linked to alleged bribery at its procurement agency, NSPA. We revealed that the Trump administration had quietly dropped two bribery cases in July, leading to three suspects’ release before their planned extradition to the US. Further reporting exposed allegations of failures in internal oversight and suppliers’ suspension from bidding on new contracts. Following the arrest of a Canadian intern on suspicion of spying at NATO, the alliance remains firmly on our radar.

Read the investigations

Examining Europe’s ties to Palantir

European money keeps flowing into controversial US tech company Palantir. With seven media partners, we found that more than 100 major European financial institutions held almost 70% more Palantir shares in 2025 than a year earlier, despite human rights and security concerns. More recently, we covered a study accusing it of aggressive tax avoidance: it paid just 1.4% of its global pre-tax profits in corporation tax in 2025. Palantir said it meets its tax obligations everywhere it operates.

Read the investigations

Thank you! Here’s to another five years!

Over the past five years, our international partners have made countless collaborations and investigations possible. We thank them all. Above all, we thank our readers. Your support lets us keep holding power to account.

5 years in Brussels: defying threats with more investigations

Birte Schohaus, Lise Witteman — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

It was a perfect photo opportunity for two of Europe’s most influential leaders: the newly appointed president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the seasoned Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi. It was the summer of 2021, and she handed him a blue-and-yellow folder. Their eyes sparkled. Inside the folder: the plan to help the Italian economy get back on its feet after the COVID-19 pandemic had hit the country hard – with billions of euros in borrowed European funds.

“We are putting our Union’s strength at the service of Italy’s recovery,” tweeted von der Leyen. “Green light to Italy's €191.5 billion recovery plan!”

This was part of the COVID-19 recovery fund, which totalled some €750 billion for all of Europe. A flagship initiative for the European Union, it was supposed, beyond helping ailing economies, to make Europe more sustainable and digitalised.

Of course, everyone pledged that every effort would be made to prevent fraud and corruption.

At Follow the Money, we were sceptical.

We knew that we couldn’t do this on our own

From our office in Amsterdam, we had been investigating for years how powerful players – from politicians to CEOs – had been misspending money, abused their influence for their own benefit, and sometimes outright committed crimes.

But politics often don’t stop at national borders. When we dove into what went wrong in the Netherlands, we also quickly ended up investigating what happened in Brussels. What we found painted a disturbing picture of the state of European democracy.

The EU’s Green Deal plans, designed to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, turned out to be a disguised attempt by the fossil fuel industry to prolong dependence on gas. The agriculture lobby, meanwhile, managed to sweep scientific evidence under the carpet when the European Commission wanted to introduce greening measures that the agriculture sector didn’t like.

EU funds, supposed to be only spent in a system of thorough checks and balances, weren’t immune to fraud. Long before von der Leyen announced her recovery plans in 2021, how billions in European funds had been spent has regularly been found to be opaque or even fraudulent.

Would the COVID recovery fund really be different?

To answer that question, we did what’s in our name: we followed the money trail.

We knew this couldn’t just be done from our office in Amsterdam. Over the years, we had occasionally been publishing in English, but the vast amount of our research was only available in Dutch. Now, we wanted to bring our investigations to a bigger, European audience – and have a dedicated team of journalists to investigate the EU itself.

So in September 2021, just three months after von der Leyen made her announcement about Italy’s recovery funds, we opened our new office in Brussels.

There was a strong sense of urgency: most media organisations have at most a couple of journalists to keep tabs on the entire European policy-making process.

That stands in contrast to an estimated 30,000 lobbyists in the European capital – roughly the same number as the civil servants appointed by the European Commission. Much of what the EU decides stays outside the public eye.

We also knew that we couldn’t do this on our own.

So, in the autumn of 2021, we kicked off a multi-year project, collaborating with colleagues from more than 20 EU countries. The aim: to trace where the hundreds of billions of euros in recovery fund money ended up.

Our initial hunch turned out to be true. We discovered that lobbyists – such as those from the car industry – managed to steer the agenda with dubious promises about sustainability. And, possibly more problematic, governments actively blocked us gaining insights into their spending, making it almost impossible to trace where huge sums of money ended up.

Now, five years on, the COVID-19 recovery fund is the subject of hundreds of fraud investigations. The estimated loss stands at €5 billion; the figure is still rising.

The EU Files

What is transpiring within the European Union? What are the goals and aspirations of the EU, and how is the budget allocated?

Growing challenges

And yet: looking back, the irregularities in 2021 were just the beginning. In the years that followed, the European Union faced challenges that far exceeded the level of opaque lobbying practices and the misappropriation of EU subsidies.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the rise of the far right, and political developments in the United States – to name just a few – pose existential dangers to Europe and threaten the continent’s freedom and the rule of law.

These threats cry out for Europe to stand firm. Europe needs a credible democratic foundation and truthful information so that Europeans cannot be pitted against each other on the basis of suspicion and populist lies.

Unfortunately, the global turmoil has exposed Europe’s Achilles’ heel: Europe’s democracy stands on a shaky foundation. Time and again, our investigations show just how much EU countries, political parties, and leaders are willing to compromise on rules and principles of democracy and the rule of law.

Von der Leyen herself seems to have repeatedly tried to evade public scrutiny. For example, she refused to release the text messages relating to the biggest deal in the history of the European Union – the purchase of billions of COVID vaccines. The EU’s second highest court has ruled against her, but her EU executive admits it still won’t change its policy regarding text messages. With that, von der Leyen has been adding fuel to the fire of Eurosceptics, conspiracy theorists, and populists.

International threats, international response

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past five years, it’s this: in times of global danger, investigating just the EU institutions is not enough. Threats have become increasingly international, digital, and disruptive. Foreign interference in national politics or European policy is nothing new, but following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s presidency, the threat has come very close to home. An attack on NATO countries is no longer a dystopian thought experiment, but a real scenario.

And so our focus has also become more global. We’ve expanded our network of reporters and newsrooms, bringing you hard-hitting stories from around the world. Journalists report for us from Indonesia and Brazil, to Senegal and Albania. We have our own reporters in Austria, Serbia and Romania, with more to come.

Just like when digging into how the recovery funds were spent, we know that media outlets are the strongest when working together. Over the years, we’ve led dozens of international collaborations, and took part in many more.

Together with dozens of newsrooms from across the bloc, for example, we’ve uncovered that Western ship owners made more than $6 billion by selling old, rusty tankers that ended up in Russia’s shadow fleet – and with that, keep the country’s oil trade going.

The journalists huddled together not only to trace the money, but also to figure out what effect this had in their own countries. The result: more than 25 articles, published by 15 newsrooms across more than 10 countries at the same time.

Journalists aren’t only stronger when working together – they’re also under increasing pressure across Europe.

The investigation into Russia’s shadow fleet was awarded the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize – named after the Maltese journalist who investigated political corruption and crime in her country.

She paid for it with her life when, in 2017, she was blown up in her car. Almost 10 years after the murder, a verdict was finally handed down against one of the suspects in the case. Despite being identified as the mastermind behind the murder, the suspect was acquitted last month.

But it is not only in Malta that journalists have to fear for their lives; the list of murdered journalists is long. Recently, our partners Forbidden Stories and Paper Trail Media, together with other outlets, revealed that hundreds of Palestinian journalists have been killed since the start of the war in Gaza. Their press vests no longer served as protection, but as targets.

And even in countries where murders of journalists aren’t common, the media face an increasing number of threats – if not always physical. So-called SLAPPs – Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation – have been on the rise each year over the last decade.

The message is clear: if you publish, you face potential fines running into millions

Designed to intimate journalists, SLAPPs are brought by companies, politicians, or other powerful figures who hire expensive law firms to sue newsrooms for, for example, defamation – even if there’s no good ground for it, and even if the plaintiff knows they won’t win the case. The aim is to intimidate and distract.

But even if they don’t actually decide to sue, that doesn’t mean that newsrooms are in the clear: threatening letters to prevent publications of uncomfortable articles have become a routine. The message is clear: if you publish, you face potential fines running into millions.

For small, independent media organisations like ours, this is a serious threat. It rarely actually comes to a court case, and we have not lost one so far. Still, the time – and money – we spend on these cases is time we cannot devote to investigative journalism.

We will carry on

“Lies are cheap, the truth is expensive.” That is what Nobel Prize winner and co-founder of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov, said recently at the opening of a journalism conference in Gdańsk, Poland. Disinformation is now everywhere; fake news spreads at lightning speed, and the algorithms that disseminate it are addictive and thrive on increasingly extreme content. Thanks to AI tools, it is no longer possible to distinguish the fake from the real.

Countries and leaders who find democracy cumbersome stand to gain from the chaos and polarisation caused by disinformation. It is no coincidence that sowing unrest and discord has been part of Russian warfare doctrine for years.

Palantir founder Peter Thiel put it this way: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

Such statements are worrying: as a well-connected billionaire, Thiel and other businessmen carry significant influence. That means that robust journalism is ever more important to make sure democracy survives. Investigative journalism hits the nail on the head. We investigate why the rich are getting richer and the abuses of power that go hand in hand with this.

In the coming years, too, we will continue to do what we do best: exposing the flow of money. Through projects that target the monstrous alliances between US and European fossil fuel companies, reveal the links between conservative think tanks and far-right organisations, or bring to light fraud involving millions and white-collar crime – to name but a few examples.

Because the wars continue, the legal threats continue – so we too will carry on. Our international team is growing, as is our journalistic ambitions. The truth may be costly, but together with our team and our partners, we are prepared to take on the fight for that truth. More international and even more in-depth than when we started five years ago, but still with the same mission: to hold those in power to account.

Five years under their skin. Let’s make it ten.

Become a member and back investigations that hold the powerful to account.

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The unknown cost of EU lawmakers’ transparency trip

Simon Van Dorpe — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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Dear readers,

Welcome back to Crime & Corruption!

Our elected representatives are travelling far. But are taxpayers getting their money’s worth? This week, we’re looking into their exotic trips, what they cost, and whether they are really useful or necessary.

Hope you enjoy our findings,

Simon

What’s in store this week:

EU lawmakers are flying far and often, but the costs and purpose of their trips are raising eyebrows
Belgium’s highest court upholds convictions of two major fraudsters who also face trial in Denmark
Other news: a former European commissioner’s right-hand man soon faces court, French prosecutors seek four years for a former culture minister, and more

The unknown cost of EU lawmakers’ transparency trip

In mid-September, I got an email from the European Parliament’s committee on budgetary control (CONT): eight Members of European Parliament (MEPs) would travel to Singapore to discuss “transparency and fighting fraud”.

The trip ran from 21 to 25 September, with two days in transit and three in Singapore. The delegation was peculiar. Four MEPs came from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and four from far-right groups. No other centrist or left-wing groups were represented.

A Parliament spokesperson said the MEPs wanted to examine “what lessons can be drawn from Singapore’s approach … to help strengthen the EU’s anti-fraud architecture”. Singapore ranks third in Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, behind Denmark and Finland.

Three people said the EPP pushed for the trip.

But several CONT lawmakers chose not to go. “Is it really useful or necessary to go there?” one of their assistants asked me. “They could have chosen Denmark or Finland,” said another assistant to an MEP who also stayed behind.

The final cost of the trip isn’t yet available, a Parliament spokesperson said.

For a mission about transparency, we’re still waiting for answers. Our hopes aren’t too high. “There is little to no transparency about the costs of these missions,” said Transparency International’s Nicholas Aiossa.

Some lawmakers are sounding alarm over the total cost of MEP’s travel outside the bloc.

At the CONT committee meeting on 1 October, Dutch Renew MEP Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy asked the Parliament’s secretary-general to examine rising travel expenses. “Especially the amount of external travel is really exploding,” he said.

Some trips raise questions about what MEPs gain from travelling so far. During one week last May, five lawmakers visited Saint Martin and Guadeloupe to investigate the algae inundating their coastlines. Nearby on the island of Martinique, seven members of the internal-market committee were trying to “better understand how the EU Single Market works in outermost regions”. Meanwhile, four lawmakers travelled to Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, to review social and labour market conditions. Other destinations of committee delegations that week included Houston, Washington D.C., Brasília, Canada, South Africa, and Mozambique.

Of the 64 MEPs on these May trips outside geographical Europe, the far-right Patriots for Europe and the centre-right EPP sent disproportionately many compared with their number of seats in Parliament. They also sent the most MEPs to Singapore.

Gerbrandy suggested the trips might help explain falling attendance at the Parliament’s committee and plenary meetings. That struck a nerve with German centre-right MEP Monika Hohlmeier. “We are not here to surveil our colleagues,” the former CONT chair shot back.

Fraudsters convicted by Belgium’s top court

Belgium’s highest court confirmed prison sentences for two US tax specialists over a dividend fraud scheme. In a 22 September judgment, the Court of Cassation largely upheld the March ruling by the Brussels Court of Appeal. The appeal court found Matthew Stein and Jérôme Lhoist guilty of forgery and fraud over a trading scheme that used tax loopholes to defraud the Belgian government of an estimated €23 million. They were each sentenced to two years in prison, but the court suspended the sentences because the proceedings had taken unreasonably long. They must also pay €13.3 million in damages.

Stein and Lhoist are also standing trial in Denmark, where they’re accused of defrauding the treasury of hundreds of millions of euros. In 2021, the global investigative collaboration The CumEx Files – which included FTM – revealed that bankers, investors, pension funds, and intermediaries had collectively defrauded 12 countries of about €150 billion.

Other news

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office is leading an investigation into former Belgian Prime Minister and EU lawmaker Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian news outlet Knack reported on Saturday. A person familiar with the matter also confirmed this to us. According to Knack, the case relates to how Verhofstadt was “steering interns” in the Parliament. The outlet also noted that MEPs cannot use assistants for work that is outside of their European mandate.

The EU has delayed €18 million in budget support to Sierra Leone. Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel linked the delay to the country’s refusal to extradite cocaine kingpin Jos Leijdekkers, adding that humanitarian aid was unaffected. The European Commission said the delay was technical, while Sierra Leone rejected the Dutch account and said the funds had been rescheduled.

Prosecutors have asked for a four-year sentence for former French Culture Minister Rachida Dati, including two years under electronic monitoring, a €450,000 fine, and a five-year ban from public office. The charges are over alleged Renault-Nissan lobbying while she was an MEP. Dati denies wrongdoing. The verdict is due on 21 January 2027.

Brussels prosecutors are preparing to bring a criminal case against Jean-Claude Fontinoy, the long-time right-hand man of former European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders, to court in November. In a 1 October press release (which didn’t name Fontinoy – several Belgian media did), they said the case is part of a broader bribery investigation into Belgium’s sovereign wealth fund.

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Podcast | Football never stopped doing business with Russia

Emma du Chatinier, Krijn Schramade — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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A rare insight into European Parliament expenses, thanks to a criminal ex-member

Peter Teffer — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

The European Parliament has exceptionally released detailed information about expenses claimed by a former member.

The Parliament normally considers data related to the travel expenses and daily allowances claimed by a specific Member of European Parliament (MEP) to be confidential. This makes it difficult for the public to scrutinise the spending of their elected representatives.

But a Parliament official said it could make an exception when Follow the Money asked for documents about former UK MEP Nathan Gill, because of his November 2025 conviction by a British court to 10-and-a-half years in prison.

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Gill was jailed for accepting bribes from a pro-Russian politician in Ukraine in exchange for making pro-Russian statements.

Data released by the Parliament provide an overview of where Gill travelled, by what means of transportation, and the cost to the European taxpayer over his roughly five-and-a-half years as an MEP.

Most expenses related to trips from his Welsh home town of Llangefni to Brussels or Strasbourg, but they also covered other journeys, for example a plane from Liverpool to Belfast in March 2015.

A campaign group said the files did not appear to contain any personal data beyond the MEP’s name and that the rare release showed European institutions were using privacy concerns as an excuse to avoid greater transparency.

The documents also list MEP Gill’s attendance of meetings from 1 July 2014 until 30 January 2020, and the roughly €300 allowance he claimed for each attended day.

The files do not show any misconduct, or trips to Russia or Ukraine paid for by the European Parliament. But they give an idea of the sort of records the European Parliament keeps on each individual MEP.

‘Barrier to transparency’

According to the draft budget for 2027, the reimbursement of so-called ordinary travel expenses will amount to €80 million that year. For comparison, MEPs’ salaries will cost a total of around €100 million.

While most MEPs use that money properly, there have been reports of misuse. In 2024, former Polish MEP Ryszard Czarnecki was charged with financial fraud for claiming travel expenses for distances he had not travelled. He had already had to pay back €100,000 to the European Parliament.

The regular release of data relating to allowances could also help people gauge the diligence of their elected representatives, said Transparency International EU director Nick Aiossa.

“Citizens don’t have a comprehensive overview of the attendance records of MEPs,” Aiossa said. “That information is important and should be in the public domain: How much does my MEP show up to work?”

The only public record is of recent attendance of the 12-weeks-per-year Strasbourg plenary. Similar data on attendance of committees or group meetings for MEPs is not available to the public.

The EU Files

What is transpiring within the European Union? What are the goals and aspirations of the EU, and how is the budget allocated?

“I didn’t see any personal data in there, other than the name of the MEP,” said Aiossa after seeing the documents.

“There’s an over-reliance on ‘personal data’ as a barrier to transparency,” he added.

When Follow the Money pointed out to the European Parliament that travel expenses did not appear to contain personal information, a spokesperson said it did not comment on individual cases, and referred to the general rules on data protection.

According to the European Parliament, such data is protected under privacy laws.

When Follow the Money asked for expenses and attendance information regarding former far-right MEP Marine Le Pen – now eyeing the French presidency – the request was denied.

There are certainly political considerations that go into these decisions

Even though Le Pen was found guilty last July of embezzling EU funds, Parliament stressed in its reply that the judgment was not final. Le Pen appealed.

“Due to the principle of the presumption of innocence, any conviction is not final until the judgment is final and may no longer be contested,” the Parliament said. Therefore, Follow the Money had not demonstrated “the necessity of transmission of the personal data concerned”.

But the release of the Gill data showed that the information contained in such expenses claims is not personal, according to Aiossa.

Business class as usual

Expense data showed that Nathan Gill travelled to Salt Lake City in October 2018. Gill, who is a Mormon, attended a symposium held by the Brigham Young University’s International Center for Law and Religion Studies.

BYU was founded by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon church. The EU parliament paid for a €2,743 return flight, a €390 hotel, and a €316.55 rental car.

Another expense that stood out was a €5,000 return flight to San Salvador, where Gill was a member of a Parliament electoral observer mission.

Those figures do not raise any red flags, according to Transparency International EU director Nick Aiossa.

MEPs fly business class, because that gives them the required flexibility to change dates. Aiossa, who previously worked in the European Parliament as assistant to several MEPs, said: “You need that flexibility. Without it, you’re probably going to be spending more in cancellation costs.”

The trip to Salt Lake City was paid out of the so-called additional travel allowance. The European Parliament can cover costs for members who are invited to an event or conference. Aiossa thinks the existence of that budget is a good thing, because if the Parliament pays instead of the inviting third party, it decreases the risks of conflicts of interest.

“Our position is actually that this travel budget for MEPs should be increased – but it should be transparent,” said Aiossa.

There are other differences between Gill’s and Le Pen’s cases beyond the legal argument. Gill is from the UK – which is no longer in the EU – while Le Pen is from France.

Gill’s former political group no longer exists, while Le Pen’s Rassemblement National MEPs make up a third of the Patriots for Europe group – the third largest group in the European Parliament.

It would not surprise Aiossa if this played a role in the Parliament’s decisions on whether to release documents. “There are legal considerations that they undertake, but there are certainly political considerations that go into these decisions,” he said.

This is especially the case for documents requests which end up with an appeal. Those are decided by a body that exists of MEPs. The rules on MEP expenses are also decided by MEPs themselves.

Transparency International EU earlier this year called for an investigation into the use of EU funds by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, after an FT report about misuse.

Asked to comment on that call, a spokesperson said that “the European Parliament does not have investigative powers”, but “fully cooperates with national or European judicial authorities if needed”.

Her Majesty doesn’t take questions

Alexander Fanta, Lise Witteman, Peter Teffer — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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Welcome back to Bureau Brussels – your weekly deep dive into the power plays, backroom deals, and investigations shaping life for millions of people across the bloc.

What’s in store this week?

Von der Leyen keeps the press at a distance
Lawmakers question the Commission’s deletion of its president’s texts
InnoEnergy’s €10 million grant awaits a delayed report

STORY OF THE WEEK

Her Majesty doesn’t take questions

There’s something to be said for monarchs keeping their distance from common people like us. It helps preserve the fairy tale about some form of supernatural power that guards us. That keeps us safe in challenging times.

Perhaps that’s the aura European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is going for, as she continuously avoids encounters with journalists.

The Brussels press corps knows the routine by now. But still, it was remarkable to watch her deliver a lengthy speech on the future of the European Union last month, in the heart of European democracy – the European Parliament – and proceed to walk off without giving journalists any opportunity to ask questions, seek clarification, or challenge her statements.

Like many other media outlets, we’ve asked for an interview countless times. But Brussels’ biggest investigative newsroom has never secured an in-depth conversation about tricky topics such as all the deleted text messages, her sometimes controversial stance on Israel’s war in Gaza, or the dismantling of the ambitious climate agenda of her first term.

Politico once publicly counted the days she refused an interview.

When the moment finally came for the Commission chief to sit down with them, however, it was at a glamorous, Uber-sponsored Politico dinner. There, the then-editor-in-chief Jamil Anderlini formally reset the clock on their countdown. His questions to her were so open that nobody could take offence. Power wasn’t held to account.

Today, the closest many of us can get is an interactive exhibition offering a virtual meeting with the president. What next? AI briefings?

The thing is: von der Leyen isn’t a monarch. Her power extends far beyond cutting ribbons.

Which raises another question: why should Jens Flosdorff – von der Leyen’s departing and long-standing media adviser, who is tasked with managing her one-sided relationship with the press – be rewarded for his efforts with a lucrative permanent EU post? Nominally overseeing “longer-term strategic communication”, Flosdorff helped shape her strained relationship with the press. He was known for selectively feeding German media, particularly outlets owned by Politico’s parent company, Axel Springer, which appear particularly influential on von der Leyen.

Avoiding questions doesn’t protect Europe. It fuels distrust and polarisation, handing ammunition to those seeking to undermine the Union. At a time when Europe faces existential challenges, a credible democratic foundation is the starting point for finding and implementing sustainable solutions.

But again, the Commission said that “no decision has been taken yet” on whether it will seek to replace Flosdorff. For an institution employing someone to oversee “longer-term strategic communication”, that says plenty.

Alexander Fanta & Lise Witteman

Other news from the EU bubble

Commission faces questions over VDL texts

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are pressing the Commission over its recent decision to keep automatically deleting Ursula von der Leyen’s text messages. Far-right lawmaker Christine Anderson has submitted several questions on behalf of the Europe of Sovereign Nations Group. The group wants the Commission to answer them in a Parliament debate. MEPs want to know: how can the Commission keep deleting texts when EU freedom of information law requires it to retain relevant messages? And if cybersecurity is the reason for wiping them from her phone, why can’t they be stored safely elsewhere?

Alexander Fanta

Final report delayed. Again.

Will the Dutch clean tech investor InnoEnergy receive the full €10 million it was granted for training battery ‘experts’ online? We still don’t know. In January, FTM uncovered that the European Battery Alliance Academy numbers that InnoEnergy had reported to the EU contained serious discrepancies. The project’s overseer, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), said that it would only comment after the project’s final report was finished. The deadline had already been pushed back to the end of May. The EIT still hasn’t sent the Commission the report or its accompanying payment request. Last Thursday, a spokesperson said it was still completing “the necessary checks” and expected to finish “in the coming weeks”.

Peter Teffer

Our recent publications

‘We’re in big trouble’: UN food agency sounds alarm over global hunger crisis

“People around the world are going to feel this.” Jean-Martin Bauer, chief analyst at the World Food Programme, is deeply concerned: after years of decline, the number of people facing hunger and famine has been rising again worldwide.

In an interview with Follow the Money, Bauer explains how wars, extreme weather, and disrupted supply routes are making the global food system increasingly vulnerable. And why this poses a risk not only to the hardest-hit countries, but ultimately to Europe as well.

The new space race forces Europe to choose: pollute or get left behind

Pollute or fall behind. That’s the choice Europe has to make as it competes for a place in the global space race. Elon Musk’s SpaceX wants to establish a constellation of one million data centre satellites. But scientists are warning that an increasingly crowded orbit could lead to collisions that disrupt communications, navigation, and internet access on Earth.

Podcast | The fight over Europe’s promise to save forests

The EU set out to protect the world’s forests. Then, it watered down its landmark Deforestation Regulation and delayed it twice. Brussels blamed technical problems, but journalist Hans Wetzels found there was a lot more to the story.

Listen to the latest episode

What we uncovered in September

Eve Moore — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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This is what we accomplished in September

Dear reader,

This edition of The Weekly is a little different. We’ll be looking back at our September stories that show what Follow the Money does best: exposing hidden interests and holding unchecked power to account.

Powerful people have the money to bury a story. Our members give us the means to dig it up. We put nearly everything we earn into following money trails, fighting for withheld records, and publishing what those involved would rather you never read.

September’s standout investigations

Curaçao’s secretive gambling industry exposed in leak

The tiny Caribbean island of Curaçao is home to a secretive network of thousands of gambling sites. These online casinos have illegally preyed on countless victims around the world. A hacker has now obtained confidential documents revealing the identities of their owners.

The documents also reveal that Curaçao regulators are ignoring warning signs about the mysterious ownership of gambling businesses while granting licences with remarkable speed. Meanwhile, experts say the island’s new gambling laws are “failing miserably”.

Read the investigation

Booze, bonuses, and wasted money plague EU’s €6bn bet on innovation

The EU gave 10 organisations €6 billion to turn research into solutions for Europe’s biggest challenges. The goal was to drive innovation but FTM found a different story.

One insider described it simply as “burning money”. Now, Brussels is deciding what happens to the system next.

Read the investigation

European universities promised to cut Israeli research ties. Dozens didn’t

Universities across Europe said they would boycott Israeli universities over the war in Gaza. Yet in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and elsewhere, cooperation continues. Some of those projects have potential military applications.

Institutions said cutting ties is not straightforward. Contracts, funding arrangements, and legal pressure can make withdrawal difficult or costly. That leaves universities caught between pressure to sever links and the consequences of doing so.

A truck loaded with bales of unsorted garments arrives from the port at the Karachi Export Processing Zone (KEPZ) in Karachi, Pakistan, on October 14, 2025.

Inside the Pakistani factories where exploited workers process Europe’s discarded clothes

Europe may be tightening rules on unsold clothing, but overproduction remains largely untouched. Huge volumes of unwanted clothes are still shipped outside the EU, leaving others to deal with the consequences.

We spoke to workers in Pakistan sorting up to 17 tonnes of textiles a day for pay below the minimum wage in gruelling conditions. Many of those workers have been displaced by disasters caused by climate change.. Our investigation exposes the human cost behind Europe’s answer to fast-fashion waste.

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Tech giants fight EU crackdown on video games that push children to spend

Gambling-like features are turning some video games into spending traps for children. Some teenagers have spent thousands on ‘loot boxes’, in-game purchases where you pay without knowing what you’ll get. Brussels is now preparing tougher rules.

But the industry is fighting back. Documents obtained by Follow the Money show lobbyists have found a powerful ally inside the European Commission. Who is helping them push back, and what could it mean for the crackdown?

Podcast | The EU’s hydrogen dream in Namibia is falling apart

Namibia was supposed to help power Europe’s climate ambitions. A multibillion-dollar, EU-funded green hydrogen project promised jobs and economic growth. But journalist Olivier van Beemen found the truth was different when he travelled there. This month, he joined Emma du Chatinier on FTM’s podcast Who’s Really Running Europe? to discuss what he uncovered.

Video

We believe students should have access to independent journalism that questions power. That’s why, in September, we opened up free FTM membership to students across Europe. Sign up and spread the word to fellow students.

Other updates

Off the Books: Our new newsletter

After 10 years following the world of financial crime and tax fraud, FTM journalist Salsabil Fayed is launching a new monthly newsletter: Off the Books. In the first edition, she explores Europe’s VAT fraud problem, the UN tax convention debate, and what the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) is doing across borders.

Our friends at Investigate Europe have launched their reader survey to help shape the future of their audience engagement and strategies.

Until next time

As always, thanks for supporting radically independent journalism. We’ll be back next week with more investigations that hold power to account.

Many readers keep up with us on LinkedIn and Instagram. Follow us there for our latest investigations, and help them reach further by sharing them.

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‘We’re in big trouble’: UN food agency sounds alarm over global hunger crisis

Jan Daalder, Sjors Hofstede — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This spring, the World Food Programme (WFP) faced a logistical nightmare – one with potentially devastating consequences for tens of thousands of children in Afghanistan.

Amid a worsening hunger crisis under the Taliban’s rule, the UN agency needed to deliver a shipment of fortified biscuits – a key source of nutrition – to 172,000 schoolchildren.

But there was one problem: the Iran war and ensuing instability across the Middle East meant there was no straightforward way to get the aid into the country.

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The biscuits were originally supposed to be shipped from Indonesia to Pakistan then trucked across the border into Afghanistan.

However – with the border closed amid rising tensions between the Islamic neighbours – the WFP diverted the shipment to Dubai, with a plan to sail the aid through the Strait of Hormuz to Iran before transporting it overland.

Then, in late February, Israel and the United States launched strikes on Iran – shutting down that route as well. The WFP went back to the drawing board and finally found a solution.

After being unloaded in Dubai, the aid crossed Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Georgia, and Azerbaijan by road, travelled across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan by ship, and finally made the last leg by lorry through northwestern Afghanistan to Kabul.

The 15,000-kilometre journey ended up being significantly longer, costlier and more complex than originally planned – but it was the only viable option remaining for the WFP.

Now, several months later, the situation remains virtually unchanged, according to Jean-Martin Bauer, the WFP’s director of food security and nutrition analysis.

“All our supplies to Afghanistan now go via that northern route through Central Asia; it has really become quite an ordeal just to get anything into the country,” he told Follow the Money.

“Nine out of 10 women who arrive at a health center hoping for food for their child are being turned away without anything. That’s the kind of situation we’re in.”

Yet Afghanistan is far from Bauer’s only concern. This year, his team has issued a growing number of alerts about worsening food crises across the globe.

Stark warning

One of those warnings came in mid-March, just a few weeks after the Iran war triggered the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Bauer and his analysts predicted that an additional 45 million people would face acute hunger due to higher energy and fertiliser prices and disrupted supply chains.

However, an analysis by FTM – backed up by food experts – suggested that this figure was an underestimate.

“The most extreme forms of hunger are increasing”

In an interview, Bauer confirmed that the WFP’s calculation was indeed cautious, but said it was intended to highlight the scale of global hunger and malnutrition.

“I started working at the WFP 25 years ago, at a time where we were talking about achieving zero hunger, eradicating hunger worldwide,” said Bauer, who spent much of his career with the agency in sub-Saharan Africa before moving to the headquarters in Rome in 2024.

“Unfortunately, we’re not headed in that direction,” Bauer added. “Even before the current wars in the Middle East, I would have told you that, for the first time this century, we’re in big trouble.”

During the interview, Bauer rattled off figures with ease, occasionally illustrating them with a graph or map on his laptop. For decades, those indicators had been moving in the right direction.

However, the number of people suffering from acute hunger in the most severe category – defined as a “total lack of food and other basic necessities” – has increased 17-fold since just before the coronavirus pandemic, according to Bauer.

More concerning still, famines are getting more frequent, he said. Bauer pointed to Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and Sudan in 2024 and 2025.

“What you had in 2025 – for the first time this century – was two famines confirmed in the same year: one in Sudan and the other one in Gaza,” he said. “I want to emphasise how rare this is.”

This is a stark contradiction in a world that produces enough food to feed 10 billion people worldwide and has more resources at its disposal than ever before, according to Bauer.

“And yet, the most extreme forms of hunger are increasing. This is because of conflict and its impacts on people,” he said.

“So something is wrong with this picture. And what we’re trying to do is attract attention to the fact that it really is something we can address.”

Crisis after crisis

Bauer highlighted the succession of shocks the global food system has had to contend with over the past six years: the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the ensuing livelihoods crisis.

Now, conflict in the Middle East has added further pressure.

“It’s been a roller coaster and it seems that some of the key coping mechanisms are just not there this time around,” Bauer said.

Governments’ ability to provide fiscal support and the international community’s capacity to respond were both constrained, he added.

The Global Food Crisis

Is the global food system on the brink of collapse? Pressure on the global food system is mounting. Energy and fertiliser costs have surged, driving up food production costs around...

The WFP – which was founded in 1961 – operates in more than 120 countries and territories. Last year, the agency provided assistance to 121 million people, delivering aid by lorry, aircraft, and ship.

Billions are needed to sustain these operations, but funding is under growing pressure.

FTM recently published an analysis highlighting the major shortfalls in international humanitarian aid despite a staggering amount of people globally that need assistance.

The global market is simply not able to meet people’s needs

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) warned earlier this year that, as of late June, less than a third of the $33 billion requested to support 143.2 million people in need worldwide had been provided.

Between 2022 and 2025 – the WFP’s funding fell by 54% to just over $6.5 billion.

That is why the US-Israeli war with Iran could not have come at a worse time, Bauer said.

In early June, the WFP published an update stating that its earlier projection – of 45 million more people facing hunger as a result of the conflict – is “now unfolding”.

A fortnight later, the agency and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that acute food insecurity is expected to worsen further for millions of people across 13 countries deemed “hunger hotspots” – including Sudan, Yemen, and Gaza.

From armed conflict to El Niño

The joint UN report said that armed conflict and violence were the main drivers, a dynamic that is particularly evident in Haiti – which is among the hotspots.

The ‌Caribbean nation is gripped by gang violence, leading to internal displacement and restricting humanitarian access. About 5.8 million people – more than half the population – are facing acute food insecurity, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said in April.

Bauer understands the reality there all too well. He has Haitian heritage and was the WFP’s regional director for the island between 2022 and 2024.

In 2024, Bauer published a book, The New Breadline: Hunger and Hope in the 21st Century, which, among other things, recounts his experiences in Haiti.

Bauer said the WFP was heavily reliant on air transport due to the pervasive violence.

“Without the helicopter we had there, you would not have access … it’s the only safe way in and out,” he told FTM. “If you go by road, you can get shot at. If you go by sea, you get shot at”

Rising fuel prices resulting from the war in the Middle East are now making such emergency air deliveries much more expensive.

“The cost of operating the UN Humanitarian Air Service in some cases is rising by 20% at least because of the increase in fuel costs,” Bauer added.

The WFP and FAO’s report said food insecurity was also fuelled by other factors from economic shocks to extreme weather.

The fallout of the conflict in the Middle East is being further exacerbated by El Niño, a climate phenomenon that can trigger either severe droughts or, conversely, extreme rainfall around the world.

El Niño officially began in early June and typically lasts for around a year.

Meteorologists estimate a 98% probability of a “very strong” El Niño event. Crop failures are expected, particularly in eastern and southern Africa, Central America, and large parts of Asia.

Bauer showed FTM an interactive WFP world map, revealing that 30 million people already depend on agricultural areas that are either too dry or, conversely, too wet.

He pointed to a drought cluster in Central Africa that had appeared in summer, and said more rain was expected on the east coast of Africa.

“So you’re starting to see the El Niño pattern manifest itself in this way,” Bauer added.

Not so distant threat

According to Bauer, there is concern that rising food prices could trigger unrest and riots.

“So in 2007 and 2008 [the global financial crisis], you had food riots in more than 30 countries,” he said.

“In 2011, you had the Arab Spring, which was driven by, in part, by an increase in global wheat prices.”

Food prices worldwide are set to rise by 2.5% this year, according to the World Bank, although analysts have warned that El Niño could drive them significantly higher.

Bauer predicted that those already hungry, displaced, or affected by war will be hit hardest.

He pointed to another WFP map tracking food price inflation. As of July 2026, Venezuela and Iran topped the charts, with prices rising by 564% and 144% respectively compared with a year earlier.

In countries where the Arab Spring began, prices are also rising sharply: food in Syria is 22% more expensive than a year ago, in Libya 18%, and in Tunisia and Egypt 8%.

Bauer referred to recent mass demonstrations in Kenya and Venezuela over falling purchasing power. “They could turn into protests over food prices,” he added.

In his 2024 book, Bauer warned that food crises are not isolated events confined to the most vulnerable regions, but will also affect wealthier countries.

He wrote that the global food crisis is also undermining social progress and security in prosperous parts of the world.

“This crisis could well be one of these major seminal moments in global supply chains and food systems,” Bauer concluded.

“We see that the global market is simply not able to meet people’s needs.”

Podcast | The fight over Europe’s promise to save forests

Emma du Chatinier, Hans Wetzels — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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The new space race forces Europe to choose: pollute or get left behind

Dimitri Tokmetzis — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Picture this scenario. A major solar storm knocks out communication with satellites in low Earth orbit – the region of space extending up to 2,000 kilometres above our planet? How long would it take before satellites began colliding?

In 2018, the answer would have been around 165 days. As of last year, that had fallen to just 2.5 days, according to research by US and Canadian academics including astrophysicist Samantha Lawler.

And if all the planned satellite launches go ahead – some 1.5 million over the next 15 years – collisions could happen within hours rather than days, the study found.

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Low Earth orbit is set to become incredibly crowded. Satellites and debris hurtle around the planet at around 28,000 kilometres per hour – seven to 14 times faster than a fired bullet.

Even a tiny piece of debris hitting a satellite can cause extensive damage, generating more space junk and increasing the risk of further collisions.

The proliferation of satellites has raised concerns about Kessler syndrome – a hypothetical chain reaction in which collisions generate so much debris that parts of Earth’s orbit could eventually become unusable.

The consequences would reach far beyond space. Satellite-based navigation, time-keeping, communications and observation of the Earth could be lost – disrupting transport by land, sea and air and disabling parts of the internet, payment systems, and critical infrastructure.

That is the worst-case scenario. But the forces that could set it in motion are already at play. Space is rapidly falling under the control of a small group of companies, backed by the US and Chinese governments.

This analysis by Follow the Money is the latest in a series exploring how the race for space is making orbit increasingly crowded – and harder to govern.

Overseeing space

SpaceX is at the centre of the satellite boom.

Elon Musk’s company operates around 10,000 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit, and aims to deploy as many as 42,000. It also wants to establish a constellation of 1 million data centre satellites. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and other firms are pursuing similar ambitions.

In total, there are plans to launch 1.5 million new satellites over the next 15 years – roughly 100 times the number currently in orbit.

Space is formally considered part of the global commons: no country can claim sovereignty over it, and it is open to use by all.

In practice, access is determined by who gets there first. Right now, that often means SpaceX

But only one part of it – geostationary orbit, roughly 36,000 kilometres above the equator – is covered by a mechanism designed to ensure equitable access for all nations.

In the 1970s, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) established a system in which states could reserve orbital “slots”, preventing the most desirable positions from being monopolised by the richest countries.

No such arrangement exists for low Earth orbit. In practice, access is determined by who gets there first. Right now, that often means SpaceX.

And companies have political backing from their governments on this front.

For example, in 2020, during US President Donald Trump’s first term, he issued an executive order stating that Washington does not regard outer space as a global commons.

In China, meanwhile, the distinction between commercial space companies and the state is far less pronounced.

Flying debris

With low Earth orbit becoming ever-more crowded, other countries are scrambling to secure their own foothold.

They include established space powers such as Europe, Russia, India, and Japan, as well as relative newcomers including the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Brazil, and Indonesia.

And while the risks of putting so many objects into orbit are increasingly evident, no one wants to lose ground in the space race. The result: more congestion and more space junk.

The US, China, Russia, and India have all tested anti-satellite weapons, generating thousands of pieces of debris. Rockets break apart, nuts and bolts come loose from satellites, and solar storms can leave objects uncontrollable or push them out of orbit.

Back in 2009, a rare collision between an inactive Russian Kosmos satellite and an American Iridium satellite created more than 2,300 pieces of debris orbiting Earth.

And this June, the Chinese Zhuque-2E rocket broke apart into 100 to 150 pieces of debris, which are now orbiting alongside Starlink satellites and the International Space Station (ISS).

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Debris Office tracks the amount of debris orbiting Earth. Its most recent estimate – from July – puts the number of man-made objects larger than 10 centimetres at 54,000.

There are also an estimated 1.2 million objects measuring between 1 and 10 centimetres, and 140 million smaller than 1 centimetre.

There is no air traffic control for space: tracking everything moving in orbit is barely coordinated.

The United States has the best overview through its worldwide network of radars and sensors. But data on, for example, the positions of US military satellites and those of some of its allies is not shared in full. Nor is there a standard for giving warnings in the event of imminent collisions.

Last year alone, Starlink satellites had to manoeuvre more than 300,000 times to avoid potential collisions.

It’s also unclear who is responsible for cleaning up space debris. The 1972 Liability Convention establishes liability for damage caused by space objects on Earth, but does not cover damage in orbit.

Companies such as Astroscale and ClearSpace are developing technology to remove debris, while the ESA is working on satellites designed to clear objects from orbit.

Yet the question of who will pay for this, and on what legal basis, remains unanswered.

Europe’s dilemma

The European Union is taking the lead in setting sustainability rules for activities in space.

The EU Space Act – a draft regulation currently under consideration in Brussels – would introduce requirements to prevent space debris and limit the lifespan of satellites.

Those rules would apply not only to European operators, but also to non-European companies seeking to provide services in the EU.

At the same time, Europe is working on alternatives to Starlink.

The EU and the ESA are developing IRIS², a constellation designed to provide secure government communications. French group Eutelsat – which operates the only low Earth orbit satellite network ⁠besides Starlink – is expanding its constellation of 650-odd satellites.

Musk’s repeated threats to cut off Starlink in Ukraine have given these efforts more urgency.

European governments are going further still – with the likes of Germany and France investing billions of euros in satellite development. What’s more, the ESA has received a 30% increase in its budget for 2025, bringing it to €22 billion.

Strategic autonomy is a concern not just for Europe as a whole, but also for individual nations, meaning much of the necessary capacity is being developed in parallel. In effect, the continent risks accelerating the very race it is trying to bring under control through the Space Act.

IRIS² and national constellations are competing for space that is already in short supply. Every country faces the same dilemma: opt out and risk dependence on others, or press ahead and contribute to an increasingly crowded orbit.

International cooperation

Another option – and a more difficult one – would be to jointly determine what countries and regions actually need in terms of space infrastructure, thereby avoiding duplicating efforts.

This idea is less far-fetched than it might seem. International cooperation has been a feature of space exploration for decades.

The ESA is perhaps the clearest example: 23 European countries jointly fund expensive missions that most could not have undertaken alone.

The race to deploy communications satellites such as Starlink is already well underway and difficult to slow

One issue is that most of the roughly 16,000 satellites currently active in low Earth orbit belong to SpaceX, while the European constellations now being planned represent only a fraction of what the US and China have in the pipeline.

Even if Europe abandoned all plans for new constellations, the effect on the total number of satellites would be negligible.

The race to deploy communications satellites such as Starlink is already well underway and will be difficult to slow. Yet space-based data centres could offer Europe a different avenue.

Nearly 1.2 million such satellites are reportedly planned, yet the continent has no concrete plans of its own for these data centres. That gives it an opportunity to use regulation and diplomacy to influence how this emerging industry develops before another race takes off.

To do so, however, Europe would need to resist agreements that weaken the idea of space as a global commons.

There is still a multilateral route.

In 2019, the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) adopted sustainability guidelines, including measures to tackle debris. Five years later, the UN Pact for the Future called for negotiations on a new international instrument covering space governance, including junk and traffic management.

Ultimately Europe is not alone. Other second-tier space powers – such as Japan, Canada, India, and Russia – have a similar interest in safeguarding access for all.

COPUOS is working on new sustainability guidelines, while the ITU is preparing rules on frequency allocation for 2027.

A coalition could give these countries greater leverage over the future of space – and more power to prevent its monopolisation and overcrowding – than Europe could ever wield alone.

With thanks to Samantha Lawler, Alex Shi, Ian Christensen, and Aaron Boley

What von der Leyen left out of her Congress of Europe pitch

Simon Van Dorpe, Salsabil Fayed, Hans Wetzels — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Welcome back to Bureau Brussels – your weekly deep dive into the power plays, backroom deals, and investigations shaping life for millions of people across the bloc.

What’s in store this week?

The words von der Leyen quietly left out of her Congress pitch
The EU fraud watchdog that ended up reviewing itself
The Russian oligarchs France and Luxembourg pushed to remove from the EU’s sanctions list

Story of the week

What von der Leyen left out of her Congress of Europe pitch

Last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered her much-anticipated “State of the European Union” (SOTEU) address. After months of lobbying and back and forth, watchers across the bloc were keen to hear what the Commission’s top priorities would be for the year ahead.

One of the major announcements was a plan for a new vision for Europe.

“I can announce today that we will be launching a new Congress of Europe,” von der Leyen said in French.

In the version of the speech that was first uploaded to the Commission’s website, the same sentence continued: “which will bring together thinkers and writers, artists and scientists, citizens, and civil society”.

Those words, however, were never spoken by von der Leyen. They were later removed from the official written version of the speech as well.

It was the only significant change between this first uploaded version – which was still available on Friday on the website of the EU’s representation in Luxembourg – and the speech she actually delivered. Other changes were mostly cosmetic.

A Commission official told us that the intention to involve civil society was still the same. But the spoken version of the speech is the official one. And the omission reopens an old wound for civil society organisations, who have been complaining that von der Leyen gives business representatives greater access to the Commission.

The missing words also raise questions about whether von der Leyen was haunted by the fate of one flagship idea from her first term: the New European Bauhaus.

In her first State of the Union speech in 2020, she announced “a new European Bauhaus – a co-creation space where architects, artists, students, engineers, and designers can work together”. The initiative was explicitly inspired by the original Bauhaus movement, founded in Germany in the 1920s as a creative experiment bringing together art, architecture, and social ideas.

Yet, the project later evolved into a Commission programme with funding mechanisms and institutional structures. Critics argued that this moved it away from its original participatory ambitions.

The Congress of Europe that von der Leyen now wants to revive has a similarly ambitious historical precedent. The original Congress was held in The Hague in 1948, bringing together politicians, intellectuals, academics, and civil society figures in committees focused on political, economic, and cultural questions. It helped build momentum for European integration, contributing to the creation of the Council of Europe and influencing the debate that eventually led to the European Communities and today’s EU.

Whether von der Leyen’s new Congress can shape ideas and politics in the same way remains to be seen. But the disappearance of “citizens and civil society” from its very first announcement is a revealing start.

Other news from the EU bubble

MEPs visit the US to discuss tax matters

Last week, members of the European Parliament’s tax committee headed to the United States to discuss how the tax haven of Delaware is combatting tax avoidance. The US didn’t agree to the OECD’s 15% minimum global tax rate in 2025. Instead, it introduced its own equivalent.

Unlike the OECD system, which looks at tax rates country by country, the US approach allows profits and taxes from different countries to be combined. Critics say this leaves the door open for a shifting of profits between jurisdictions to keep the overall tax rate above 15%, while paying much less in tax havens.

“Unfortunately, in our view, the US is lagging behind in matters of transparency and, at times, even moving backwards,” Luděk Niedermayer, delegation leader (EPP), said on Thursday.

Salsabil Fayed

The EU’s top fraud watchdog was just evaluated by … itself

The Commission last week published a report evaluating the power and limits of its “independent” anti-fraud office, OLAF. It took us a while to find out who actually wrote this. The answer could be found in the accompanying staff working document: “The lead Commission service for this file is DG OLAF.”

The Commission has always maintained that OLAF is fully independent when it comes to investigating fraud and corruption.. However, when it comes to policy work, OLAF operates just like any other Commission department.

But critics may still ask: should OLAF really be reviewing the rules governing its own powers, especially when it concludes that those rules are fit for purpose?

Simon Van Dorpe

EU removes Russian oligarchs from sanctions list

EU member states agreed last Tuesday to extend sanctions against Russia – but only after France and Luxembourg pushed to remove two high-profile oligarchs from the list.

France cited “national security” concerns. Luxembourg succeeded in getting Mikhail Fridman, a banking tycoon, off the list. The probable reason: the Russian billionaire has filed a record $16 billion claim against the Luxembourg government for freezing his assets following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The case is still pending. Last year, Follow the Money revealed that Fridman had also used a 1996 investment treaty between Belgium, Luxembourg, and Ukraine to sue the war-torn country.

Hans Wetzels

Our recent publications

Why taking EU funding away from mayors could empower the far right

For nearly 40 years, EU funding has gone directly to poorer regions to help them catch up. Now, the Commission wants to bring much more of that money under central control.

The shift could deepen regional divides and fuel support for the far right. Commission insiders say it could also give Ursula von der Leyen greater control over the EU budget. So why is Brussels pushing ahead, and who stands to lose?

Podcast | The EU’s hydrogen dream in Namibia is falling apart

Namibia was supposed to help power Europe’s climate goals. A multi-billion-dollar project backed by EU money promised to develop green hydrogen, create jobs, and fuel economic growth. But when journalist Olivier van Beemen travelled to Namibia, he found a very different reality.

Listen to the episode

Brussels wants more control over funding for its poorest regions

Eve Moore — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Our journalism is only possible thanks to the trust of our paying members. Not a member yet? Sign up now

Dear readers,

This week, FTM journalist Salsabil Fayed launched Off the Books, a new monthly newsletter on financial fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and the people trying to stop it.

We probed the consequences of changes to EU regional funding, looked into how the bloc’s great hydrogen plans in Namibia are derailing, and exposed Curaçao’s secretive and poorly regulated gambling industry.

Elsewhere, our partners investigated the US third-country deportation system.

Here’s your weekly investigative briefing.

From us:

Why taking EU funding away from mayors could empower the far right

For nearly 40 years, EU funding has gone directly to poorer regions to help them catch up. Now, the Commission wants to bring much more of that money under central control.

Off the Books: Europe has a VAT fraud problem. What’s it actually doing about it?

After 10 years following the world of financial crime, tax fraud, and the people trying to stop it, FTM journalist Salsabil Fayed is launching a new monthly newsletter: Off the Books. In the first edition, she explores Europe’s VAT fraud problem, the UN tax convention debate, and what the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) is doing across borders.

Read the first edition

Podcast | The EU’s hydrogen dream in Namibia is falling apart

Curaçao’s secretive gambling industry exposed in leak

The tiny Caribbean island of Curaçao is home to a secretive network of thousands of gambling sites. Some of these online casinos have illegally preyed on countless victims around the world. A hacker has now obtained confidential documents revealing the identities of their hidden owners.

The documents also reveal that Curaçao regulators are ignoring warning signs about the mysterious ownership of gambling businesses while granting licences with remarkable speed. Meanwhile, one analyst said that the island’s new gambling laws are “failing miserably”.

From friends of FTM:

The Deportation Project

Forbidden Stories and a consortium of 26 media partners, including Paper Trail Media, investigated how the US has deported people to countries where they were neither born nor had previously lived or had substantial ties. Reporters traced 25,447 people, who were brought to a third country. According to internal government documents obtained by the Washington Post, by the end of June this year, the Trump administration had pledged at least $410 million to facilitate agreements with 35 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America. Of 37 deportees interviewed, more than 20 said they were shackled during transport, some for over 30 hours, while more than 10 said they had a special legal status of protection.

Until next week

As always, thanks for reading and supporting independent journalism. We’ll be back next week with more investigations that hold power to account and a new episode of our podcast.

If our investigations matter to you, please consider becoming a member. Follow the Money is funded entirely by its readers, and every membership helps us continue our work.

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Got feedback, tips, or story ideas? Get in touch at info@ftm.nl

Why taking EU funding away from mayors could empower the far right

Hans Wetzels — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This article in 1 minute

What’s the news?

The European Commission plans to reform the EU’s regional policy. Under its proposal, direct EU funding for regional authorities would stop from 2028.
Mayors and regional leaders across the EU fear they will have to halt important economic, social, and infrastructure projects if they lose access to this funding.

Why does this matter?

The Commission says the changes would allow it to allocate funds more efficiently and ensure that spending supports priorities such as budgetary discipline and economic competitiveness.
FTM’s interviews with EU insiders reveal that some Commission officials have been sidelined in the reform process, raising concerns of a power grab by Brussels.
Academics warn that cutting EU funding to vulnerable regions could boost far-right and anti-European populist parties - further weakening support for the EU.

How was this investigated?

FTM interviewed mayors and regional administrators across Europe to find out how important EU regional grants are and what they mean in practice.
The investigation examined evaluations of EU regional policy and academic research on the effects of European funding in vulnerable regions and the popularity of populist parties, and spoke to the authors.
FTM also spoke to several anonymous insiders working on regional policy within the European institutions to find out why the Commission is pushing for these budgetary reforms.

This article is part of an ongoing series.

The EU Files

Life in the Polish province of Łódź revolves around the Bełchatów power plant, a vast complex flanked by a lignite mine so large it can be seen from space.

In the nearby mining villages, gardens dotted with fruit trees are carefully tended, and on every street corner a statue of Jesus is adorned with little Polish flags. But beyond this picturesque scene, the power station’s 300-metre chimneys dominate the horizon.

Its environmental footprint is just as imposing.

Bełchatów is Europe’s most polluting power plant – although it is due to close within a decade as Poland seeks to phase out coal and the EU pursues its goal of becoming climate neutral by 2050.

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To support Łódź’s transition away from mining, the EU is providing more €369.5 million from 2021 to 2027. Hanna Zdanowska, mayor of the regional capital, has used some of that money to build roads and tram lines, retrain former mining engineers, and attract investors.

That strategy seems to have paid off: major companies including Siemens and white goods manufacturer Miele have set up operations in Łódź or expanded their activities in the area.

For Zdanowska – who has been mayor since 2010 – this demonstrates why EU policy is most effective when decisions are made as close as possible to the communities affected.

“With the money we receive from Brussels, the EU becomes tangible and allows us to address the conditions in which frustration and a sense of abandonment otherwise would grow,” she told Follow the Money.

“I am very concerned that the direct role of cities and regions could be weakened”

However, to Zdanowska’s dismay, the European Commission last year announced plans to overhaul the EU budget and end direct funding for regions like Łódź.

Instead, member states would draw up national and regional plans deciding how EU money is spent.

Negotiations over the proposal are due to enter their final phase this October, with EU institutions hoping to reach an agreement by the end of the year.

“I am very concerned that the direct role of cities and regions could be weakened,” Zdanowska said. “And this is not only about access to funding; it is about having a real say in setting priorities and selecting projects in our own regions.”

By cutting direct support to regional policymakers, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hopes to exert greater control over fiscal policy in member states and safeguard the bloc’s economic competitiveness, five insiders at various EU institutions told FTM.

Yet mayors, researchers, and EU officials warn that sidelining some of Europe’s most vulnerable regions could widen inequalities, deepen public distrust in the bloc, and ultimately fuel the far right.

“This will only reinforce the idea that the EU is an elitist project where decisions are made top-down, while citizens get left behind and have no voice,” said Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, a professor of economic geography at the London School of Economics (LSE) who studies EU regional policy.

No region left behind

The EU’s regional policy – known in Brussels jargon as cohesion policy (see box) – may sound rather dry on paper, but it involves vast sums of money.

For the 2021-2027 period, €392 billion has been set aside for mayors and regional policymakers – amounting to almost a third of the EU’s total budget.

The policy is intended to reduce economic disparities across the single market, preventing regions from falling behind and strengthening the EU’s economic and political stability.

Regional policy for EU cohesion

The regional policy was first set up in 1988 and then further institutionalised in the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 to promote “territorial cohesion” within the EU as a whole.

In practice, regional development funding is channelled through several programmes.

The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) supports economic development, the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) focuses on employment and social inclusion, and the Cohesion Fund (CF) finances environmental and infrastructure projects.

Since the introduction of the European Green Deal in 2019, the EU also created the Just Transition Fund (JTF) to support regions transitioning away from polluting heavy industries.

In principle, such funding is available for any European region – but the amount of EU support varies according to their level of development.

Wealthier countries such as the Netherlands and Germany generally have to cover a larger share of project costs themselves. Some EU regional funds are available only to member states whose gross national income is below 90% of the EU average.

The impact of EU regional funding is particularly visible across Eastern and Southern Europe, where signs bearing the bloc’s flag stand beside new roads and railway stations.

Spain used regional subsidies to modernise its railway network; in Estonia, high-speed internet connections were established to support the digital economy.

Poland has benefitted more than any other member state, receiving a total of €250 billion since joining the EU in 2004. Two-thirds of that money came through regional funding programmes.

One of the leading proponents of this model is Kata Tüttő.

She is president of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), a relatively little-known EU advisory body through which 329 regional policymakers and mayors cooperate to influence the bloc’s policy.

Tüttő described the EU’s regional policy as one of “Europe’s greatest success stories”.

“Without a mechanism to reinvest part of those gains, the strongest regions tend to become even stronger, while weaker regions risk falling further behind,” she said.

“It is an investment policy, not a redistribution policy, because it finances the conditions that allow every region to participate in the European economy.”

Simplification drive

Yet the system Tüttő celebrates is now under threat.

The Commission’s plan would centralise control over regional funding and weaken the role of mayors and other local policymakers in deciding how EU money is spent, its critics say.

Faced with rapid economic and geopolitical change, trade wars, military threats, and the return of strongman politics, von der Leyen’s administration wants the ability to redirect EU money quickly – instead of locking it into long-term regional development programmes.

The EU Files

What is transpiring within the European Union? What are the goals and aspirations of the EU, and how is the budget allocated?

Strengthening Europe’s economic competitiveness is a key priority for the current Commission. So is simplifying all legislation that it believes could hinder that goal.

In July 2025, von der Leyen unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the EU budget from 2028. At present, most money is distributed via a web of specialised funding arrangements and subsidy programmes that support farmers, fishers and mayors, fund infrastructure projects, and even finance EU agencies like the border agency Frontex.

Under the Commission’s proposal, that system would change significantly.

From 2028, each member state would draft a National and Regional Partnership Plan (NRPP) setting out how EU money allocated to its territory would be spent.

This reform boils down to EU money just being dumped in capital cities

The Commission says member states will have access to the same overall funding as under the current system.

Less-developed regions would also be guaranteed a minimum share, with a safeguard to ensure they receive at least as much funding overall as they do currently.

The reforms would give national governments greater flexibility and budgetary freedom, but also concentrate more power in the Commission’s hands. Brussels would be able to withhold funding more easily if a country’s plan failed to meet EU priorities.

According to the Commission, the new NRPPs would still be designed and implemented in cooperation with both member states’ governments and regional authorities.

A Commission spokesperson told FTM that the new approach would deliver European priorities much more effectively, while bringing “less administrative burden” and “faster implementation”.

Fears over populism

Beyond the Brussels bubble, the proposal has caused outright panic.

More than 12,000 mayors and regional policymakers fear they could quickly lose access to EU funding.

One of them, Vasco Alves Cordeiro, is a member of parliament in the Portuguese Azores.

The archipelago – more than 1,500 kilometres from mainland Europe – is struggling with poverty and an exodus of young people.

The Azores will receive €160 million through the EU’s regional policy between 2021 and 2027. Its government plans to invest that money in digital infrastructure and marine research projects, with the aim of creating high-quality jobs.

Yet Alves Cordeiro fears that most such initiatives could be abandoned before they are completed if the Commission puts an end to direct regional funding from 2028.

“This reform boils down to EU money just being dumped in the capital cities from now on, with the Commission saying: just see where this yields the greatest return,” he told FTM in a video call.

“That rarely is in a remote region such as the Azores, where communities that feel they are being abandoned much more easily tend to accept some form of political extremism.”

The link between EU funding and populism should not be underestimated.

“I consider it very likely that scrapping regional subsidies will be exploited by populists”

In 2024, the Kiel Institute compared regions that had been given EU funding with similar regions that received none.

The German think tank’s research found that direct regional funding reduced the vote share of right-wing populist parties by 15% to 20%.

For Kiel Institute researcher Robert Gold, that makes the Commission’s proposed overhaul all the more striking.

He said the economic outlook did not need to improve dramatically: simply knowing that Brussels backed their region was enough to maintain many people’s confidence in the EU.

“Conversely, I consider it very likely that scrapping regional subsidies will be exploited by populists who then can portray Brussels as an elite project that pays no mind to ordinary people,” Gold added.

Development trap

The Commission’s emphasis on simplification and economic competitiveness as the main justification for its reforms has been contested within Brussels.

A 2024 research paper – co-authored by Commission officials – found that an excessive focus on competitiveness effectively leads to underinvestment in regions that have already fallen behind.

National governments then invest less in public transport, housing, culture, or sports facilities, making an area even less attractive as a place to live and work.

The result is a vicious development trap that can prove hard to break – and which directly fuels the rise of populist parties, according to Rodríguez-Pose of LSE, a co-author of the study.

“If the Commission decides to invest massively in developing AI because we want to win the tech race with the US and China, you can no longer spend that money in Dunkirk or the east of Poland,” he said.

“Yet those are the areas where the populist danger is greatest.”

Resistance to von der Leyen’s plans is also brewing within the Commission itself.

The Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) has overseen the EU’s regional policy for decades.

But five people working on regional affairs within EU institutions told FTM – all speaking on condition of anonymity – that von der Leyen and her senior officials have sidelined DG REGIO while drafting the budget overhaul that could drastically diminish the department’s role.

“The people working on these plans internally view the whole world through a macroeconomic lens,” one Commission official said.

“They want to be able to impose fiscal measures on member states that improve the EU’s competitiveness. They don’t really care about which region these investments end up in.”

In a separate interview, another EU official said: “Von der Leyen certainly doesn’t show her face in the region I come from. She’s afraid to face the consequences of her policies. But if you start disconnecting EU policies from the places where people live, the whole system collapses because it is no longer credible.”

Power grab in Brussels

The same EU insiders also warn of what they describe as a quiet power grab by the European Commission.

By linking member states’ access to EU funds to economic reforms set in Brussels, they argue, von der Leyen would gain the power to impose far-reaching budgetary demands, including pension reforms.

“These plans are essentially about concentrating power,” another Brussels official said. “The message is that member states are free to do as they please, provided they follow the Commission’s demands on competitiveness and the economy.”

EU governments appear divided over the Commission’s proposals.

The Netherlands – along with other wealthy member states – supports von der Leyen’s plan and its greater emphasis on economic competitiveness.

However, another group of countries, calling itself the Friends of Cohesion, are against it. France, Italy, and Spain fear that linking EU funding to fiscal reforms could give the Commission sweeping powers over matters generally considered to be domestic affairs.

Speaking from his office in the Azores, parliamentarian Alves Cordeiro sounded exasperated.

Can you really expect citizens that don’t see much support from Brussels to keep backing the idea of this EU?

He acknowledged that EU policies needed simplifying, but warned that the Commission’s lack of transparency over reforms affecting millions of people could fuel Euroscepticism.

“Of course I know von der Leyen doesn’t meet with her officials at midnight, covered in black drapes, to secretly plot to decide about the destruction of the EU’s regional policy,” Alves Cordeiro said.

“But extreme political views can emerge easily in areas that feel they are left behind. Can you really expect citizens that do not see much support from Brussels to keep backing the idea of this EU?”

Podcast | The EU’s hydrogen dream in Namibia is falling apart

Emma du Chatinier, Olivier van Beemen — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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Europe has a VAT fraud problem. What’s it actually doing about it?

Salsabil Fayed — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Our journalism is only possible thanks to the trust of our paying members. Not a member yet? Sign up now

Hi readers,

A warm welcome to the first edition of Off the Books, Follow the Money’s new monthly newsletter. Here, I’ll dive deeper into the world I’ve followed closely for the past 10 years: tax, fraud, and money laundering.

As financial systems grow more opaque and politically contested, I’ll reflect on recent policies and political battles and take a closer look at the decisions being shaped right now.

In this month’s newsletter:

Europe’s uphill battle against VAT fraud
UN tax convention: the fight between North and South over tax revenues
Other news: how money laundering became a business model

Europe has a VAT fraud problem. What’s it actually doing about it?

The financial mastermind of one of Europe’s biggest VAT fraud cases, together with five other defendants, was handed a years-long prison sentence earlier this month, as I reported last week.

I was thrilled to hear from one of my readers, who pointed out that one crucial question remained unanswered: what is the EU doing about it?

Answering that question is not simple – but I’ll try my best to explain here what the bloc has done so far.

One major problem that national authorities encounter is the fact that tax authorities are basically running behind the criminals: Someone working at one of the authorities once told me that time is their biggest enemy: by the time authorities receive the tax filings – or realise there is no filing – the criminals have likely already successfully pulled off the scheme. They’ve bankrupted the company, left with the stolen VAT money, created another company, and started the criminal cycle again.

With its ViDa package, introduced in 2025, the EU tries to tackle that problem. It aimed to modernise the entire VAT system through digital reporting and digital invoices and a single VAT registration system. This package will be fully implemented in phases until 2035.

The package’s first major deadline is 1 January 2027. From then, companies will be able to declare and pay VAT on sales to customers in other EU countries through a single system, rather than registering in each country. A similar system will also be introduced for goods imported into the EU from outside the bloc.

Another solution is the EU’s new framework, which the Council provisionally agreed on earlier this year. It facilitates the sharing of VAT data with, among others, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO). It also gives the EPPO more direct access to relevant information held by national authorities.

This should help reduce the time between national tax authorities detecting suspected VAT fraud and the EPPO being able to access the information needed to investigate it.

These are but a few examples of what the EU has been setting in motion over the last few years. But by all means, do let me know if you have some insights on the topic, tips, or questions. I’ll be more than happy to talk with you – maybe even over a coffee if you’re in town!

Parliament tries to tackle VAT fraud

While we’re on the topic of VAT fraud, the European Parliament huddled together on 7 September to brainstorm how to tackle the vast list of weak points the EU has that make this type of fraud possible: think about the incessant abuse of customs legislations, the use of shell companies, or the forgery of documents.

UCLouvain professor Marie Lamensch advocated for prevention rather than the current focus on detection and prosecution. But what will that look like? I left the room with even more questions than answers.

Frank Heijmann, customs counsellor at the Netherlands’s permanent representation to the EU, argued that standardising more training for customs officers across all member states could help tackle the problem.

On 1 October, the Parliament’s committee on tax matters will discuss combatting illicit financial flows. I’ll be watching this one closely.

African countries fight back for fair taxation income

While you were relaxing at the beach, I was following a fierce summer debate over the UN tax convention.

If passed, the convention could lead to a fundamental shift in global taxation by helping recover money from corporate tax abuse and hidden wealth.

“Tax law is something states guard rather jealously,” said Jan Klabbers, professor in international law at the University of Helsinki. “Even so, the symbolic relevance of the UN sponsoring a global tax convention might be considerable.” The negotiations are set to take place three times a year until 2027.

During the conference, which lasted from 3 to 13 August, Africa’s delegation fiercely advocated for shifting the taxation burden from the country where headquarters are situated to where real economic activity occurs. Resource-rich countries – where for example oil is sourced from – miss out on hundreds of billions of euros in tax revenues as companies shift their profit, on paper, to other countries.

By contrast, Switzerland and Estonia are pushing back against exactly that – they want the word “real” out of the text. That’s because both Switzerland and Estonia have low tax rates and are popular for companies to register their offices without having actual employees there. Shifting the tax burden to countries where the economic activity actually takes place could mean huge economic losses for those two countries.

Chenai Mukumba, executive director of Tax Justice Network Africa, said a few days ahead of the conference that “the process is fundamentally about reclaiming our [African countries] economic sovereignty”.

September at a glance

Last Friday, the European Commission published its first evaluation of the independent European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO). The EU’s top prosecution office celebrated 5 years in existence this summer.
The Parliament approved new e-commerce and customs rules, which will come into effect on 1 November. The EU-level Data system will replace 111 data systems and combine them into one place.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) released a new report on how money laundering is becoming more and more like a business model.

Curaçao’s secretive gambling industry exposed in leak

David Davidson, Sjors Hofstede, Lukas Kotkamp — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This article in 1 minute

What’s the news?

Berlin-based hacker and researcher Lilith Wittmann hacked the licensing system of the Curaçao Gaming Authority, and obtained tens of thousands of confidential documents relating to hundreds of gambling companies registered on the island.
The documents reveal the identities of the previously anonymous owners of online casinos that have courted controversy and faced scrutiny worldwide.
The files show that Curaçao’s gambling regulator routinely granted licences without establishing whether the declared owners were actually in charge, and despite applicants failing to provide important information.

Why does it matter?

Over the past few decades, Curaçao has become a hub for thousands of gambling websites. Several major operators have been fined or blacklisted in markets around the globe for operating illegally.
Anonymous letterbox companies have made it very difficult for gambling regulators, tax authorities, and journalists to identify who is actually in control.
Financial experts say that the lack of transparency fuels the risk of money laundering and criminal influence in the industry.

How was it investigated?

Follow the Money analysed dozens of licence applications from gambling companies, supporting documents, and the Curaçao regulator’s assessments.
FTM is publishing the findings under the title Casino Secrets, in coordination with Wittmann and media partners NRK (Norway), NDR (Germany), Jetzt (Austria), and SVT (Sweden).

The tiny Caribbean island of Curaçao is a hub for thousands of gambling sites – among them operators that have illegally targeted customers worldwide while their owners stay shrouded in secrecy.

Authorities in Australia, the United States, and across Europe have blacklisted Curaçao-registered online casinos for taking bets without licences, breaching anti-money laundering rules, taking advantage of vulnerable gamblers, and paying no tax.

But regulators, tax authorities, and journalists from around the world repeatedly encounter the same obstacle when trying to identify those responsible: a web of anonymous letterbox companies in a jurisdiction with lax oversight.

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As a result, the multibillion-euro gambling industry in Curaçao – a self-governing Dutch territory of just over 150,000 people – has long remained a black box.

Until now.

Late last year, Berlin-based hacker and cybersecurity researcher Lilith Wittmann infiltrated the systems of the Curaçao Gaming Authority, the island’s gambling regulator.

Wittmann had previously hacked the Malta Gaming Authority and contributed as a journalist to investigations into misconduct in the gambling industry.

For this latest investigation into Curacao’s gambling industry, she obtained tens of thousands of confidential documents – including the names of companies’ owners, licence applications and the regulator’s assessments. The cache also contained passports, tax returns, and sensitive financial information.

Follow the Money (with reporting by correspondent Dick Drayer in Curaçao) is publishing the findings in coordination with Wittmann, and several media partners: NRK in Norway, NDR in Germany, Jetzt in Austria, and SVT in Sweden.

“I decided it was important enough for us as a society to know who owns these companies”

The investigation, called Casino Secrets, has revealed the identities of about 800 owners of nearly 650 licensed gambling firms, which collectively operate thousands of gambling sites.

They also show that Curaçao routinely granted licences to companies even when applicants withheld key information or were suspected of targeting gamblers in countries where they were not authorised to operate.

Financial experts told FTM that the files reveal more than administrative shortcomings: they demonstrate how Curaçao’s regulator gave its seal of approval to gambling companies whose true owners remained uncertain.

That has allowed opaque operators to claim legitimacy despite unanswered questions about potential money laundering and criminal influence, according to the analysts.

A haven for gambling operators

Since the 1990s, Curaçao has attracted gambling companies either unable or unwilling to obtain licences in the countries where they target players.

For decades, the government granted master licences to a handful of private companies, which then sold sublicences to online operators with virtually no state supervision.

A Curaçao licence allowed gambling platforms to establish themselves on the island and operate offshore, but did not automatically permit them to accept bets in other countries.

The main appeal of the licence was that it gave operators access to a casino-friendly ecosystem of trust offices, payment companies and casino software providers.

The licence also provided a veneer of legitimacy. Payment firms and gambling software providers often treated it as sufficient grounds to work with an operator.

Curaçao-based lawyer Roel Bijkerk – who represents aggrieved gamblers – previously described the licence as an “excuse” for service providers to work with gambling platforms: “They apparently have no problem partnering with these parties as long as they see a licence, even if it is worthless,” he told FTM back in 2023.

Under pressure from the Netherlands, Curaçao overhauled the system in 2024 to bring operators under the direct oversight of a government regulator for the first time.

Yet the reforms have not resolved the industry’s problems.

Curaçao-licensed sites continue to be blacklisted and fined for targeting gamblers in countries where they lack permission to operate, while their owners can still conceal their identities behind letterbox firms administered by trust offices on the island.

Immense wealth

At first glance, the trio appear to have little in common.

One is an extremely wealthy Dutchman barely out of his twenties. Another is the son of a famous US film producer. The third is a Filipino tech manager in Manila.

Even exhaustive searches of corporate registers around the world would be highly unlikely to reveal the connection between them. But Casino Secrets can reveal that all three individuals are – on paper at least – the ultimate beneficial owners of companies behind large and controversial online casinos and betting platforms.

The first is Nick van Gorsel, a 30-year-old from the Dutch province of North Brabant. He is one of the two owners of Prolific Trade NV, the Curaçao letterbox company behind the Brazilian gambling site Blaze.com.

In 2023, Blaze – which hailed footballer Neymar Jr. as a brand ambassador – faced scrutiny in Brazil after users complained that their winnings had not been paid out. The allegations prompted a series of legal proceedings against the company.

Blaze denied the allegations at the time, and refused to disclose details about its owners, arguing that “the focus on individuals distracts from what really matters: the quality, safety and fairness of the gaming experience offered by Blaze.com”.

The site has made van Gorsel very wealthy, according to documents he submitted to the Curaçao regulator. In a 2024 disclosure, he declared assets of €800 million. He owns a penthouse in Amsterdam’s Zuidas district and has a property in Switzerland.

“Blaze’s success made Nick a multimillionaire and secured him a prominent position in the gaming industry,” Van Gorsel wrote in a signed statement regarding the origin of his wealth. His co-owner – American entrepreneur Nicholas Beugg, who is also 30 – declared assets of €500 million to the Curaçao regulator.

Neither owner responded to questions sent to the email addresses they provided to the regulator. Stefanie Knoester of eMoore, the Curaçao trust firm that acts as a director of Prolific Trade NV, said she was bound by “strict confidentiality” and could not “verify, confirm or deny” anything.

The third figure in this unlikely trio is Manila-based Joanna Tinaco Arenas. The 42-year-old tech manager’s name leads back to a notorious gambling platform that has been recently fined for operating illegally in the Netherlands.

The obtained documents show that Arenas is the ultimate beneficial owner of Novatech Solutions NV, the Curaçao-based letterbox company behind online casino Qbet.com. In 2024, she was also listed as a manager at Novatech (Pasay) Solutions, a company near Manila that provides support services to gambling firms.

In March, the Dutch Gambling Authority hit Novatech Solutions NV with a record fine of nearly €25m for operating illegally in the Netherlands.

Until last year, Qbet was one of the biggest illegal gambling sites in the Netherlands and generated tens of millions of euros in profits, according to the Dutch regulator. Novatech has appealed against the fine. Neither Novatech nor Qbet responded to FTM’s questions.

In April, Nederlandse Loterij – the Dutch state-owned lottery operator – sued Qbet in a bid to “hold operators, trust offices, letterbox companies and their directors liable” for unfair competition.

Exposing red flags

To uncover the people behind Curaçao’s gambling industry, Wittmann first needed access to the regulator’s licensing portal.

In December, Wittmann registered on the Curaçao Gaming Authority’s website using the name of a Dutch trust office manager known to the regulator, but entered her own Gmail address.

She claimed to represent DreamCatcher Private Foundation – a fictitious firm she had invented for the purpose of applying for a gambling licence.

The failure to spot warning signs – or act on them – appears to be a recurring problem at the Curaçao regulator

The fact Wittman had used her personal email address apparently escaped scrutiny. Within days, she was granted access to the regulator’s portal.

Once logged in, the hacker uploaded software that allowed her to take control of the licensing portal and gain access to all information and documents stored there.

The failure to spot warning signs – or act on them – appears to be a recurring problem at the Curaçao regulator, headed by director Cedric Pietersz.

Dozens of licence applications reviewed by FTM show that assessors repeatedly identified serious problems, only to accept vague or incomplete responses.

Time and again, their final recommendation to the regulator’s management board was: “The licence may be granted”. While approval was often conditional on applicants supplying further information, the missing details were rarely provided.

In some cases, the source of an owner’s wealth was unclear – information crucial to preventing money laundering.

On the other hand, some applicants appeared to have too little money to be credible as the true ultimate beneficial owners of gambling companies, raising questions about who was really in control.

The files also contained indications that gambling firms were operating in countries where they lacked a licence, including warnings from and blacklisting by foreign regulators.

At FTM’s request, Marcel Pheijffer – professor of forensic accountancy at Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands – analysed several assessments used by the Curaçao gambling regulator to justify licensing decisions.

He found that licences were granted even when important questions remained unanswered.

“In the Dutch context, that approach would not be possible,” Pheijffer said. “In fact, I believe it should not be the case anywhere.”

Casino giants and ‘crypto kings’

The Curaçao regulator’s blind spots extended to two leading gambling operators.

Russian-founded 1xBet and crypto casino Stake were granted licences in the last two years, despite the regulator lacking crucial information about who owned and controlled them.

1xBet has sponsored top-flight football leagues, including Italy’s Serie A and Spain’s La Liga. In 2023, FTM revealed how the company used Curaçao as a springboard to expand globally while flouting the law in several markets.

1xBet has been linked to illegal gambling and illicit advertising across countries from the Netherlands and Russia to the UK, prompting criminal proceedings and the termination of sponsorship deals with leading British football clubs.

Stake, meanwhile, has rapper Drake as its figurehead and was until last year a sponsor of the Formula 1 team Sauber. A previous FTM investigation showed how aggressive and sometimes covert marketing helped turn Stake into a multibillion-dollar company within a matter of years.

This year, its logo even appeared in a post by US President Donald Trump on Truth Social, despite Stake not being licensed to operate in the United States.

Both gambling giants have been fined or blacklisted in numerous countries. In 2019, the Dutch Gambling Authority fined 1xBet for illegally targeting gamblers.

Young tech billionaires Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani – hailed by the media as “crypto kings” – are widely known as Stake’s founders.

Yet on paper, Stake is owned not by Craven or Tehrani, but by Mladen Vuckovic.

The Serbian national is registered as the owner of Medium Rare NV, the Curaçao-based letterbox company behind Stake. In a disclosure submitted to the regulator in 2024, Vuckovic declared assets of more than $1 billion. He was already publicly known as Stake’s chief executive officer, but not as its owner.

Officials at the Curaçao gambling regulator questioned whether Vuckovic was really the sole owner.

This is a business that is highly susceptible to money laundering

They identified loans and payments worth tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars from Medium Rare to companies and individuals linked to Craven and Tehrani.

Yet neither man was mentioned in Stake’s licence application.

Given the uncertainties over Stake’s ownership, the academic Pheijffer said it was “incomprehensible” that the Curaçao regulator had granted the company a licence.

Officials at the regulator also raised doubts about 1xBet in 2024.

Publicly available information identifies its owners as three Russians: Roman Semiokhin, Dmitry Kazorin and Sergey Karshkov, who died in 2023.

However, the investigation found that Ukrainian national Ihor Hniedash is listed as both the CEO and owner of Caecus NV, the Curaçao letterbox firm behind 1xBet.

There is no other link between Hniedash and either Caecus NV or the gambling site. According to his disclosure to the Curaçao regulator, the 39-year-old earns just under €10 million a year from the company.

In their final report recommending whether to grant the licence, assessors at the Curaçao Gaming Authority said they suspected 1xBet had “multiple owners”.

They wanted Hniedash to provide more information about his possible “business relationship” with the three Russians identified as 1xBet’s founders. Nonetheless, the regulator granted the company a licence in 2024 without receiving those answers.

Pheijffer said it was “remarkable” that the CGA repeatedly grants licences before gambling companies have provided important information.

“This is a business that is highly susceptible to money laundering, particularly when it comes to transactions in cryptocurrencies,” he added.

1xBet and Ronnie de Mei, director of Capital Trust Corporation N.V. – which represents the gambling company in Curaçao – told FTM that they were unable to respond to “assumptions” based on documents they had not seen.

Transition period

In response to the findings and FTM’s emailed questions, the Curaçao Gaming Authority did not dispute that it had granted licences despite unresolved questions about gambling companies’ ownership and corporate structures.

However, the regulator said the sector was going through a transition period.

Companies have been given time to meet the requirements of Curaçao’s new gambling law – which was passed in 2024, after almost 30 years under a system in which the industry on the island was mostly self-governed.

“Under the responsibility of the minister of finance, it was decided not to implement all requirements at once, but to give companies the opportunity to comply with them step by step,” the Curaçao Gaming Authority said.

The regulator explained that its guiding principle was not to “immediately refuse a licence or terminate existing activities whenever there is a question or uncertainty”.

It did acknowledge that Curaçao-based gambling sites operating in countries without permission was “a matter of concern”, but said the issue was “not black and white”.

Distinguishing between actively targeting a market and merely accepting customers from that jurisdiction was “complex”, the regulator added.

Pheijffer of Nyenrode Business University said he did not consider the transition period as a valid justification.

“A regulator must think first and then act,” he said. “And not – as is the case here – the other way round.”

According to Jan van Koningsveld, an expert in offshore finance, Curaçao’s new gambling legislation is clear: regulators must establish, as far as possible, the identity, existence, and involvement of all owners and decision-makers.

This is important, he said, because concealed ownership creates significant money laundering risks in the gambling industry, and could allow organised crime networks to influence companies – or even become their owners.

Van Koningsveld examined the recommendation to license Stake in particular.

He said lingering uncertainty did not necessarily mean the Curaçao Gaming Authority should have refused the licence, but that the regulator could “be expected to carry out an in-depth investigation and exercise ongoing supervision”.

The strongest criticism came from Björn Fuchs, chairman of the Dutch online gambling trade association VNLOK.

He said Curaçao’s new gambling law appeared to be “failing miserably”, pointing to operators that had “actively and illegally targeted the Dutch market in recent years”.

Fuchs called for tougher checks on issues such as ownership, integrity, and financial health – warning that licences should be refused when red flags remain unresolved.

For Wittmann, the regulator’s failure to resolve such questions justified bringing its files into the open. Wittmann compared her hacking to undercover journalism, and said she was motivated by the fact she had rarely encountered a Curaçao-based gambling company operating entirely within the law.

“So I decided it was important enough for us as a society to know who owns these companies,” she added.

Data research methodology

This article makes use of documents which FTM knew had been obtained through hacking. The decision to use this information is based on the public interest of raising awareness about exploitative and illegal practices within Curaçao’s gambling sector.

These abuses are serious, cause harm to people’s lives and countries across the world, and have been taking place over a long period of time.

FTM has chosen to use only those documents that came into Wittmann’s possession in December. This is the information that she obtained before FTM made contact with her or was aware of the hack at the Curaçao Gaming Authority.

As FTM did not use any documents obtained after the initial breach, last December is the cut-off date for this story.

The investigation focused on two key areas: the ultimate beneficial owners and trust offices linked to all 646 organisations that held a licence as of December, according to the documents. We based our analysis on a database from the leak that identified the individuals involved.

In the case of the ultimate beneficial owners, this database did not always match the information contained in the documents. FTM therefore manually checked the files to determine the owners.

This involved examining the corporate structures submitted by applicants, personal disclosure forms describing individuals’ roles within organisations, and the final recommendations drawn up by the regulator’s officials.

This allowed FTM to verify 897 ultimate beneficial owner records relating to 767 individuals, some of whom owned multiple companies. During the manual review, it was also possible to establish their nationalities from the passports provided.

The checks showed that 65 individuals had transferred their ownership stakes before December 2025 and were no longer ultimate beneficial owners.

FTM could not verify whether another 30 people remained ultimate beneficial owners because relevant documents were missing. Nevertheless, both groups were included to provide a broader picture of the nationalities represented among current and former owners.

With the representatives of trust offices, an initial manual review of 100 companies found that the leaked database was more accurate than for the ultimate beneficial owners.

For the remaining companies, FTM therefore extracted this information directly from the database, checking the original documents in cases of doubt. A random sample was then used to verify the unchecked records.

The analysis identified 40 individuals representing the gambling companies, 31 of whom held Dutch passports. Of these, 14 were born in Curaçao and 12 in the Netherlands; the remaining five were born elsewhere, such as Suriname and Turkey.

FTM also identified the trust offices employing each representative. In total, 30 offices were involved, making it possible to calculate the proportion of gambling companies represented by each one.

Experts with Big Tech ties advised von der Leyen’s child social media panel

Peter Teffer, Lise Witteman, Simon Van Dorpe — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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Good morning readers,

Welcome back to Bureau Brussels. Our reporters, much like the rest of the bloc (and Canada), watched Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech closely last week. They’ve been picking apart what her promises mean for Europe and what was left unsaid.

What’s in store this week?

Von der Leyen vowed to take on Big Tech. Some experts advising her had ties to the industry.
Parliament shielded its legal affairs chair. Now EU prosecutors are taking the fight to court.
Nine suspects face charges over an alleged scheme to bring damaged and dangerous US cars into Europe.

Experts with Big Tech ties advised von der Leyen’s child social media panel

In her State of the European Union speech last week, Ursula von der Leyen had a blunt message for Big Tech: Brussels is ready to act. Announcing new restrictions on social media use by children, the European Commission president said that “Europe has the power to act”.

“It is we who decide our rules, not Big Tech,” she said.

What she didn’t mention was that some of the experts on a panel advising her have, or previously had, ties to Big Tech.

Among the experts was Amsterdam communication professor Jessica Piotrowski, who’s also served on advisory groups for Google and YouTube. She even appeared in a Google “promotional publication”. Piotrowski defended her “ancillary activities”, arguing that they allow professors to apply their “independent academic expertise to public and societal issues”. She added that all of her advisory roles are publicly disclosed on the university website, in line with university policy.

Another participant was Jutta Croll, chair of the board of Stiftung Digitale Chancen, a foundation co-founded by O2 Telefónica Germany. In 2025, it reported a €323,351 donation from the Google.org Charitable Giving Fund. Croll said the foundation’s activities funded with industry money “are in no way related” to the panel’s work on child online safety. She added that “up to 90%” of the group's funding came from public sources, and that its board assessed industry funding sources carefully “not to undermine [the] organisation’s independence”.

A Commission spokesperson said it knew some participants “have collaborated with companies in the past”. They added that these people “were asked to declare any conflicts of interest”. However, none of these were made public.

Jörg Fegert, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Ulm University Medical Centre, who had chaired the group, confirmed that potential conflicts of interest were considered.

Fegert said the group had dropped one invited specialist after new information came to light. He said it was “not at his disposal” to reveal who. He stressed that the panel's final report was written solely by him and fellow co-chair Maria Melchior.

This wasn’t enough reassurance for Ruud Sneep, whose organisation first informed us about some of the panellists’ ties with the tech industry. Sneep is the co-founder of a Dutch foundation that helps parents and schools agree on delaying the age at which children start using smartphones and social media.

“For a panel presenting itself as independent and advising the European Commission on rules affecting some of the world’s most powerful companies, transparency should have been a basic requirement,” said Sneep. “When the eventual recommendation aligns so closely with the industry’s longstanding position, that lack of transparency raises questions.”

The report recommended introducing an EU-wide access restriction to social media for children under 13. However, 13 years is already the minimum age many social media themselves have set in place, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X. Sneep noted companies have “a clear commercial incentive of reaching children as early as possible”.

The minimum age wasn’t his only concern. Sneep fears the report’s recommendation to allow “supervised use” of social media for children between three and 13 could create a loophole. “Parental consent … creates a route for platforms to reach children below even that threshold, while it is hard to see how any type of consent could make an unsafe environment safe.”

In the end, von der Leyen proposed 15 as the minimum age, while allowing 13 to 15-year-olds to use “mini accounts” set up and supervised by their parents. But the proposal can still be amended by member states and MEPs.

Peter Teffer

Other news from the EU bubble

EU prosecutors contest protection of legal affairs chair

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) has challenged the decision of the European Parliament to shield Bulgarian lawmaker Ilhan Kyuchyuk (Renew Europe) from criminal prosecution before the EU’s General Court, a person familiar with the matter said.

Bulgarian prosecutors were investigating Kyuchyuk, who chairs Parliament’s legal affairs committee, for allegedly using Parliament funds to support his national party.

Parliament argued the case amounted to political persecution after the EPPO suspended the investigation’s lead prosecutor for “serious political misconduct”. In July, Members of European Parliament (MEPs) refused to lift Kyuchyuk’s immunity.

Meanwhile, the Parliament voted by a razor-thin majority to lift the immunity of Slovenian EPP lawmaker Matej Tonin, despite a personal intervention by EPP chief Manfred Weber.

Simon Van Dorpe

Indictments in fraudulent trade of damaged cars

EPPO has indicted nine suspects in the Nimmersatt investigation, an alleged scheme to import damaged and dangerous cars from the US into Europe. One of those charged is the alleged ringleader of the organisation. The case will now be heard by a court in Dresden.

Lise Witteman

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Leadership change at embattled clean tech investor

FTM has written several articles about EU-funded clean tech investor InnoEnergy, revealing a European fraud investigation and an alleged waste of taxpayer money. This week, the company will hold its general assembly. One topic sure to come up will be the recent departure of InnoEnergy’s CEO Sébastien Clerc. He left a mere eight months after taking the role, “to pursue other professional opportunities”. His exit followed that of executive board member Karine Vernier, who led InnoEnergy France, three months ago.

Peter Teffer

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Damage, denial, displacement

Eve Moore — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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Dear reader,

This week, our investigation revealed the human cost of Europe’s fast-fashion waste at Pakistani factories processing discarded clothes. We covered new developments in a €520 million VAT fraud case, Rabobank’s role in a controversial Bolivian forest deal, and a lobbying battle against an EU law seeking to crack down on harmful gaming practices.

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Next week, we’ll be launching Off the Books, Salsabil Fayed’s new newsletter taking you deep into the world of financial fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion. Stay tuned and make sure you’re subscribed here.

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Inside the Pakistani factories where exploited workers process Europe’s discarded clothes

Raluca Besliu, Hawwa Fazal, Helena Rodríguez Gómez, Vittoria Torsello — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This article in one minute

What’s the news?

Europeans are discarding a vast – and growing — amount of low-quality clothes. Companies that sort these clothes within the EU are unable to process textiles in the volumes they receive.
Sorters therefore send hundreds of thousands of tonnes of textiles for processing outside the EU every year. One of the primary destinations in Pakistan.
A Follow the Money investigation focused on an industrial zone in Pakistan found that workers sorting these clothes are often underpaid, subject to harassment and desperate to leave their jobs.

Why does it matter?

Europe is set to strengthen its ‘circular economy’ requirements, compelling ever more producers to reuse rather than destroy clothes and accessories in the coming years.
Unless the bloc curbs clothing production at the same time, or develops its own capacity for sorting, cleaning, and recycling, the strain on workers outside the EU will only increase.

How was it investigated?

Follow the Money gained rare access to Karachi’s Export Processing Zone, an industrial enclave in Pakistan where many of these textiles are now processed.
There, journalists spoke with workers, their families, and union representatives.
Reporters also spoke to people involved in textile recycling in Europe.
The investigation was carried out in collaboration with the Spanish news outlet El País.

This article is part of an ongoing series.

The Climate Economy

Sixteen-year-old Ayesha spends her days sorting mountains of discarded clothing in a factory in Pakistan, much of it sent from Europe.

The teenager, who is paid less than the minimum wage, told Follow the Money that she has been subject to verbal abuse by management.

Her 30-person team is expected to sort some 17 tonnes of clothing every day. No one is allowed to leave until that quota is met.

And this is just one example out of thousands of people in the southern city of Karachi – many of them forced to seek work away from their communities because of climate disasters – whose labour sustains a growing trade in Europe’s discarded clothing.

They work in conditions that fall well short of the standards the EU expects within its own borders.

As Europe tightens rules on textile waste without tackling the volume of clothing it produces and discards, the burden of processing its unwanted garments is increasingly pushed onto workers and communities far beyond the bloc.

Ayesha at her home in an informal settlement near KEPZ in Karachi, Pakistan, on November 23, 2025

No way out

When Ayesha once asked to leave one evening because she was the only woman still inside the factory, she said her supervisor erupted. For many women in Pakistan, being left alone with men can feel dangerous.

“He screamed and hurled abuse so bad that I cried and ran towards the exit door. I just forgot everything. I just wanted to go home,” she said.

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By the time she reached the factory gate, she was sobbing. But the guard stopped her and demanded she return the company-issued shoes, an employee requirement.

“Going back inside was not an option, so I walked home barefoot,” Ayesha said. “I do not want to work there anymore.”

A payslip obtained by Follow the Money shows that Ayesha earns the equivalent of €70-75 a month, including overtime and an attendance bonus. This is roughly 35% below the legal minimum wage in the industrial area where she works.

“I leave at 7 am and come back at 7 pm. Every minute I am there, they would want me to work. If you are standing at your station and your back is not hunched over your table, the supervisor would come and scold us, saying not to waste time,” she said.

For now, Ayesha sees no way out. “She can’t leave her workplace,” said her mother, who is also in Karachi. “We depend on her, her younger brother and my salary to feed the twelve people in this house.”

Inside the KEPZ

The factory where Ayesha works is part of Karachi’s Export Processing Zone (KEPZ), an industrial enclave built in 1982 around tax breaks and limited regulatory oversight that has become a major destination for second-hand European textiles.

Our reporters in Pakistan gained rare access to factories inside the KEPZ, a zone that is notoriously difficult for journalists to enter. They interviewed workers, as well as factory owners and KEPZ officials, obtained payslips, and documented working conditions through photographs.

We can’t handle this amount of clothes... We are up against the wall

Once brought from the port, huge bales of mixed garments are opened on the factory floor. Dozens of labourers, trained for speed and accuracy, manually sort garments into large metal cages according to broad categories such as T-shirts, full-sleeve shirts, pants, and jeans.

According to UN data, the EU exported 216,649 tonnes of used clothing to Pakistan in 2025 alone, making it one of the main recipients of EU second-hand clothes.

Follow the Money traced this trade directly.

In 2025, reporters placed twenty-eight SmartTags inside donated garments in seven European cities. Four of the twelve trackers that ultimately left the EU ended up inside the KEPZ, confirming that clothes discarded by European consumers are arriving at this industrial hub.

The flow of clothing is likely to grow.

Since 19 July 2026, large companies across the EU have been prohibited from destroying unsold clothing, accessories and footwear. Medium-sized companies will face the same rules from 2030.

While the EU has banned destruction, it has not curbed overproduction, meaning that ever more surplus clothing may be exported overseas.

Under the EU Waste Framework Directive, however, discarded textiles should be processed within the bloc.

Despite this, the EU’s unwanted clothing has become the foundation of a labour-intensive industry where workers like Ayesha sort the continent’s cast-offs.

The route to Pakistan

As the EU pushes for a circular economy – which prioritises sharing, reusing and recycling rather than discarding clothes – its own infrastructure is struggling to process an avalanche of donated garments.

These garments are mostly low-quality polyester clothes, driven by the rise of fast fashion, as previously reported by Follow the Money.

Left: Bales of used garments sorted by fabric type are pictured inside a factory at KEPZ. Right: Houses line a drain carrying sewage and industrial waste from surrounding factories toward the sea in Karachi, Pakistan, on October 19, 2025.

Many sorting facilities across the EU are now operating at a loss because they are paid small amounts per tonne of clothing and lack the advanced machinery needed to handle the rising volume of second-hand clothing.

“We are a small company,” said Antonio Cannone, the head of Cannone srl, a sorter in Andria, southern Italy. “We can’t handle this amount of clothes. We look for foreign solutions, because we are up against the wall.”

Philippe Doliger, a policy advisor at the think tank Recycling Europe, said that, while sorters in the EU are poorly paid, sorting costs have nevertheless increased in recent years. This was largely down to inflation and rising energy prices, he said, which had led some companies to declare bankruptcy or enter insolvency.

Doliger added that, should this trend continue, the consequences would be bleak.

“If the whole sector collapses in Europe, it will take much longer to rebuild. And then actually the sorting will be done outside of Europe,” he stressed.

This chronic bottleneck is driving many EU sorters to outsource textile processing outside the EU, including in the KEPZ.

In Karachi, Europe’s old clothes are sorted and then re-exported to countries in Africa and Asia, as well as back to the EU.

The best goes back to Europe

Some of the best-quality clothes are sent back to Europe from Pakistan for resale or recycling. Between 2015 and 2025, second-hand clothing imports from Pakistan to the EU increased by more than 300 per cent, reaching over 2,561 tonnes in 2025.

“These items are sold mainly to sustainable shops in Italy, where they are recycled, cut, and remade into new garments. This recycling process makes them among the most valuable items we handle,” said a factory owner in the KEPZ, who asked that his name not be used in this report.

Some of the imported clothes arriving in Europe are processed near Florence, where specialised machines turn these materials into fine textiles for big fashion brands such as Zara and H&M.

While official statistics on KEPZ workers are not available, labour experts told Follow the Money that many are climate-displaced migrants, people who lost everything in Pakistan’s devastating floods or droughts in recent years and moved to Karachi in search of work.

“Karachi has become a city of migrants, with many ending up in the textile sector,” Zeenia Shaukat and Shujauddin Qureshi, labour researchers from Karachi, told Follow the Money. They pointed to climate change phenomena as key drivers of this migration.

Climate change, to which the EU has historically contributed on a disproportionate scale, is now feeding the workforce that processes the EU’s textile waste.

“I don’t have an option...I have to earn so my family can survive”

Nineteen-year-old Madiha is one of these climate-driven migrants. She and her family came to Karachi around four years ago from a village in Sindh, when floods in 2022 destroyed their home.

Now, Madiha works in one of the KEPZ factories sorting old clothes for around €80 a month.

Her wages are not guaranteed: they include attendance bonuses, which can be deducted if she misses more than two days a month, regardless of the reason.

“The work is tiring. I am mostly working with my arms and neck in constant pain due to the repeated action required in sorting clothes,” Madiha said.

Still, she cannot afford to stop. Her income, together with her father’s earnings as a day labourer, supports a family of seven.

“I don’t have an option,” she said. “I have to earn so my family can survive in this big city.”

A truck loaded with unsorted bales arrives at KEPZ in Karachi, Pakistan, on October 14, 2025, as debris from a recent factory fire lies scattered along the road at left.

Crumbling infrastructure

Floods are not the only disaster pushing people to Karachi.

Labour researcher Shaukat and her colleague Qureshi report that farming families are increasingly leaving their communities as recurring droughts slash crop yields across Sindh province.

Eighteen-year-old Zameer was among those forced to leave.

His family of eight depended on agriculture before worsening droughts made farming unsustainable. Now he earns about €100 a month packing the clothes back into bales for export in a KEPZ factory, half of which he sends back home.

“Life isn’t easy here as it was back in the village, but the money I earn here means survival for my family back home.” he said. “Even if I am a day or two late sending money, they call me worried that I lost the job.”

The Climate Economy

Climate change is reshaping the global economy and who holds power. FTM investigates who profits, who loses, and who pays the price.

He lives in a room in the so-called labour colony, an area designated by the government for factory workers in the KEPZ and beyond, which he shares with eight other men.

Built in the 1970s, the settlement’s infrastructure is crumbling: walls are paper-thin, its lanes so narrow that two people cannot walk side by side, and sewage runs openly between the houses.

Frequent electric and gas cuts mean that workers often cannot cool themselves in Karachi’s oppressive heat or prepare a warm meal.

Just a short walk away, however, the factories glow with electricity all day and the roads leading to them are paved without a single pothole.

The Pakistani government ensures the factories have access to adequate infrastructure, like well-maintained roads and reliable electricity, to keep the zone attractive to investors.

A KEPZ signboard is pictured along Mehran Highway in Karachi, Pakistan, on November 23, 2025.

When the KEPZ was established, it was exempted from all Pakistani labour laws. These exemptions were partially lifted in 2021, allowing employees to get statutory leave, social security, retirement contributions and overtime pay, which is double their hourly wage.

Yet five years on, little has changed within the zone’s boundaries: many employers still refuse to comply with the law, even though doing so is now mandatory.

Workers like Madiha and Zameer are scared to ask that their rights be respected, for fear they will lose their jobs.

“If we make the slightest complaint about safety issues or extra hours, companies fire us and replace us with other people in a matter of hours,” Zameer said.

A National Trade Union Federation representative, who asked that his real name not be used for fear or reprisals, said the lack of effective work representation allows the employers to ignore the law with few consequences.

“One of the main reasons factory owners can blatantly defy the law is the absence of a labor union,” he said, explaining that the workers are too scared of losing their source of income.

Slow, uneven progress

Since 2025, national governments across the EU have been rolling out the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policy for textiles.

Under the EPR, clothing brands and retailers are made to foot the bill for collecting, sorting and recycling the garments they put on the market.

The policy tool was meant to make the industry pay for its own environmental impact, but the obligation stops at the EU’s borders.

Producers fund collection and sorting within the bloc, but the moment a bale of used clothing is exported, as much of it is, the financial responsibility disappears.

“The key thing missing from the EPR schemes is a mechanism to transfer fees,” said Emily Macintosh, a senior policy officer for textiles at the European Environmental Bureau.

She added: “How these funds could be transferred to countries receiving large volumes of EU textile exports is not addressed. This transfer would be a way to recognise that these countries are already doing the circularity that we are trying to promote in the EU.”

Workers load unsorted garments onto small trolleys before pushing them by hand to sorting tables inside a factory at KEPZ in Karachi, Pakistan, on October 14, 2025

Progress on the EPR has meanwhile been slow and uneven, and most member states are still working on legislation to implement it.

Others in the European used textiles sector told Follow the Money that even when countries implement the EPR fully, large volumes of clothes are still likely to be sent abroad to countries like Pakistan because of a lack of capacity at home.

“For years, the networks we belong to have warned about the sector’s lack of circularity, its dependence on exports and the lack of public funding,” said Natàlia Yesares, from the Spanish Association of Recovery Entities for Social and Supportive Economy. “But the crisis we are experiencing now is more severe than anything we have seen before.”

‘Sustainable fashion’ collections

Some of the garments sorted by Ayesha, Madiha and Zameer will eventually return to the EU, resurfacing in vintage shops, resale apps and “sustainable fashion” collections.

The labels rarely reveal where a garment was sorted, or who handled it along the way.

A European consumer buying second-hand under the promise of circular fashion has no way of knowing whether the T-shirt in their hands passed through a facility where workers earn below the minimum wage and face penalties for missing targets.

For Ayesha, Madiha, and Zameer, there is no clear route out. They do not have access to a union, a labour inspector with the authority to enforce KEPZ’s own wage floor, or any binding EU mechanism that reaches into the zone’s supply chains.

“I am trying to find a job outside the zone which would have better conditions and pay, but so far I have had no luck,” Zameer said. “I am stuck with this because I have to send money back home at any cost.”

This investigation was supported by JournalismFund.eu.

EU executive will keep deleting von der Leyen’s texts, despite watchdog warnings

Alexander Fanta — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 14:24:00 GMT

The European Commission will ignore a watchdog’s rebuke to stop deleting text messages by President Ursula von der Leyen, the EU executive said in a letter obtained by FTM.

This was, the Commission told European Ombudsman Teresa Anjinho in the letter, for safety reasons.

Keeping such messages long enough to process access requests from the public “cannot be reconciled with the necessary cybersecurity measure”, the Commission said in a statement to the Ombudsman obtained by Follow the Money. In some cases, given the length of possible appeals procedures, access requests can take up to two years.

In June this year, the Ombudsman found that the Commission had mishandled another request for a text message by French President Emmanuel Macron to von der Leyen. The Ombudsman’s investigation, which followed a complaint by FTM, concluded that the Commission should change its internal rules to make sure it does not delete texts requested under the EU’s freedom of information law.

This comes over a year after the so-called Pfizergate ruling. In May 2025, the EU’s second highest court ruled that the Commission was wrong to refuse access to texts exchanged between von der Leyen and pharma giant Pfizer at the height of the Covid pandemic.

As part of its inquiry into the messages exchanged with Macron, the Ombudsman asked the Commission to retain “for a reasonable period, all text and instant messages exchanged between Heads of State or Government, or ministers, and Members of the Commission”.

But the Commission refuses to do so, according to its reply.

Von der Leyen and EU leaders “need to have the possibility to exchange in an atmosphere of mutual trust and confidentiality”, it argued, adding that it “gives high priority to security and follows IT guidance including automatic deletion rules”.

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The EU Files

What is transpiring within the European Union? What are the goals and aspirations of the EU, and how is the budget allocated?

This argument, however, was flawed, according to legal scholar Päivi Leino-Sandberg of the University of Helsinki, an expert on the EU’s access laws.

She argued that it could not just be left to the Commission’s discretion to decide which text messages it keeps, and it should be possible to externally review such decisions.

“Important messages concerning the activities of the institutions need to be preserved,” she said.

The cybersecurity argument also didn’t hold water, she argued: von der Leyen did not need to keep the messages “stored in the phone that travels in her handbag”. Instead, the Commission could well delete the messages from the phone, but store them for posterity on secure devices.

When deciding whether to keep messages, the Commission refers to the EU’s security guidance, which recommends auto-deleting messages within a “sensible” time, such as a week, through the encrypted app Signal’s disappearing messages feature.

Ringleader of one of the EU’s biggest VAT fraud cases jailed for years in Italy

Salsabil Fayed — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 07:00:00 GMT

Six suspects in one of the EU’s largest tax fraud cases have been convicted to several years in prison, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) said on Thursday.

Italy’s Court of Milan sentenced the defendants on Friday, sending them to prison for between four and just over seven years, according to an EPPO press release.

Over several years, a group of criminals sold electronic goods, ranging from Apple AirPods to electronic hard drives, while skipping paying VAT on them with the help of fake invoices. After having laundered the proceeds through companies in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai, the financial masterminds bought luxury villas, yachts, and Rolex watches.

The EPPO’s investigation dates back to 2022 and led to the discovery of a €520 million fraud that involved almost 200 individuals and 400 companies. The scheme was eventually exposed in part thanks to wiretaps placed in one of the suspects’ homes.

The scheme involved two of the most prominent mafia groups, the Neapolitan Camorra and Sicilian Cosa Nostra, Follow the Money reported last month. The mafia used the proceeds as investments.

“These verdicts confirm what the EPPO has been warning about for years: mafia organisations are investing in VAT fraud as a vehicle to launder their criminal proceeds,” said European Chief Prosecutor Laura Kövesi in a press release. “They are causing massive damages to national and EU budgets.”

The judge also ordered the seizure of some €300 million in profits from the scheme, as well as assets and shares in companies owned by the defendants.

One of the ringleaders was amongst those who were convicted on Friday: Rodolphe Ballaera, a 45-year old Belgian national. After being on the run for about six months, he turned himself in and was arrested in May 2025.

He is seen as the architect of the VAT fraud scheme alongside Paolo Falavigna, who was convicted earlier this year.

Also sentenced on Friday was Vincenzo Perrillo, known as Rio. He is a member of the Neapolitan branch of the Italian mafia and a crucial figure within the scheme, connecting the Neapolitan network with Ballaera. He also recruited straw men to pose as the directors of fraudulent companies, according to the EPPO’s indictment documents.

The defendants can appeal the decision.

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Rabobank backed a bid to preserve a Bolivian forest. It lost to Brazil’s ‘king of soy’

Bart Crezee — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This article in 1 minute

What’s the news?

A 30,000 hectare plot of forest in Bolivia – roughly the size of Malta – has been sold to a family that owns one of the world’s largest soy companies, Bom Futuro.
Bom Futuro has been accused of contributing to deforestation in the region. As much as two-thirds of the forest could be cleared to make space for agricultural operations if the family’s plans go ahead, amounting to millions of trees that could be cut.
A group of investors had bid for the same patch of land, aiming to preserve the forest in large parts. The investors were backed by the Netherlands’ Rabo Carbon Bank, a sustainability subsidiary of Rabobank.
But, Follow the Money can reveal, an employee of Rabobank was the director of the Dutch holding company through which the Bom Futuro family acquired the forest, raising conflict of interest questions.

Why does this matter?

The Bolivian forest area is a crucial and unique ecosystem in the region, hosting rare species and providing a corridor for animals to migrate between different areas.
Cutting down the forest could lead to drought across the entire region, environmental experts have told FTM.
Indigenous groups that live close to the area have also expressed concern about the usage of land.
The Amazon forest is already under pressure from climate change and accelerated deforestation and is nearing a tipping point.

How was this investigated?

FTM got access to internal emails that show Rabo Carbon Bank’s plans for the project and that confirm that the forest was ultimately sold to the Bom Futuro family instead.
Dutch, Bolivian, and Brazilian Chamber of Commerce records were reviewed, showing that the employee was both an official at Rabobank while being director of a company that facilitated the sale to the Bom Futuro family.

This article is part of an ongoing series.

The Climate Economy

“MEGA SALE!”

That’s the poster with which a furniture and parquet shop in the Dutch coastal town of Bergen op Zoom, announced in June 2025 that all remaining furniture stock had to go.

INPA’s warm and cosy showroom, which sells anything from parquets and tables to chairs, has been a well-known landmark near the city centre for decades. Now, it was restructuring its business to focus entirely on wooden floorings.

What the ad didn’t mention: the owners weren’t only selling furniture. Paul and Ella Roosenboom, who have been running the family business since 1994, were also selling off their arguably most expensive possession, worth millions of euros: a tropical forest area of more than 30,000 hectares in Bolivia – about the size of Malta – from where they sourced wood for their flooring.

“Amazonia and the tropical savannas are already approaching critical tipping points”

The tropical forest area sits in the Chiquitania region in the east of Bolivia and forms an important ecological corridor between the dry plains of the Gran Chaco to the south and the Amazon rainforest to the north. Unlike the rainforest, it is a relatively dry area. It is a crucial ecosystem that allows wildlife to migrate between the different biomes and is home to threatened species such as the jaguar.

The business family behind one of the world’s biggest producers of soy, Bom Futuro, has won the bid for the forest – and that has environmentalists worried. The new owners have made clear that they intend to turn large parts of the forest into agricultural fields, which could prompt drought across the entire region. Similarly, indigenous people living close to the forest have expressed concerns over how the land is going to be used.

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With that, Bom Futuro beat a European group of environmentally-minded investors, backed by the Netherlands’ Rabobank, internal emails first reported by news outlet Mongabay show.

But while the sale was being finalised, a Rabobank employee was the director of a Dutch holding company that formally bought the patch of land on behalf of the Bom Futuro family, a Follow the Money investigation uncovers.

“The loss of approximately 30,000 hectares of intact forest at the INPA property would not only mean the loss of an important part of the Chiquitano dry forest; it could also weaken the regional water cycle,” said Federico Viscarra, science officer at the regional sustainability initiative Science Panel for the Amazon. “This is particularly concerning because Amazonia and the tropical savannas to its south are already approaching critical tipping points.”

Accelerated deforestation

Bom Futuro group is owned by a powerful Brazilian billionaire family, the Maggi Scheffers. That family bought the plot for some $20 million (about €17 million at the time), an internal email seen by FTM shows.

The family is led by the brothers Eraí – known as Brazil’s King of Soy – and Fernando Maggi Scheffer. Now, through a network of companies, including the newly-founded Dutch holding company H2B, they bought INPA’s patch of forest.

In July, ownership of H2B was transferred to an anonymous investment fund in the Bahamas. It is therefore not clear if the family is still the current owner or whether they stepped away from their plans in Bolivia.

Neither the Maggi Scheffer family nor Bom Futuro replied to questions about whether they were still the current owner.

Trees being burned for land clearance in the Bom Futuro National Forest, Rondônia, Brazil

Bom Futuro claims it does sustainable farming and engages in agriculture best practices – but reality seems to suggest otherwise. It manages vast tracts of land in Mato Grosso, Brazil’s deforestation hotspot for many years, from where it exports around 2 million tonnes of soy and maize annually.

So far, under INPA’s ownership since 2000, the Bolivian forest plot saw only a limited number of logs cut down, as it held a sustainable timber certification. Switching to a more intensive agriculture approach could mean that up to 2 million trees in the area could be felled.

“The sudden sale to Bom Futuro is a slap in the face for Amazonas for Life”

“It is expected that Bom Futuro would like to cut down two-thirds of the forest for agricultural purposes,” an official at the Dutch foreign affairs ministry who worked on the issue said in the email. This would contradict a 2019 Bolivian legal ruling, which states that the immense forest area can only be used for forestry activities.

Large-scale land conversion could have disastrous consequences.

Johan Rockström, director of the Germany-based Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said that the loss of the INPA forest would lead to accelerated drought across the entire region.

That’s because evaporation from the forest contributes to the formation of rain clouds – which means that cutting trees could cause a loss of rainfall over the whole Chiquitania.

“The consequences could be large and permanent,” he said.

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This comes in addition to other stress factors. For example, tropical forests have to cope with increasing temperatures and a growing number of climate-related drought events. After Brazil, Bolivia has the highest rate of tropical deforestation in the world, particularly in the eastern Chiquitania region.

In the worst-case scenario, the combination of drought and deforestation could lead to a tipping point as early as 2040, with large parts of the Amazon forest turning into savannahs. This could threaten food production and the livelihoods of millions of people, studies have found.

Indigenous people living in the region have also expressed their concern over changing land titles, which they say threatens the environment with extensive monoculture planting adjacent to the indigenous’ territory, Mongabay reported.

Neither the Maggi Scheffer family nor Bom Futuro responded to requests for comment.

However, Fernando Maggi Scheffer admitted to Bloomberg that once the forest area has been cleared, it would initially be used for cattle farming. “You enter as a cattle rancher. You can’t arrive and put in crops, it’s too expensive,” he said. “Later, when it degrades, in the future, you change to soy.”

‘A slap in the face’

Bom Futuro wasn’t the only contender for the piece of land: discussions were also taking place with a group of investors backed by Rabo Carbon Bank, a Rabobank subsidiary focused on sustainability, according to the emails seen by Follow the Money.

Under those plans, Swedish social enterprise Amazonas For Life would have bought INPA’s assets in Bolivia to grow baru and cashew nuts. Together with selling carbon credits and a limited quantity of timber, this was intended to guarantee sustainability.

To fund this alternative future for the forest, Amazonas for Life was seeking a total loan of $26.1 million (some €22 million at the time) from the group of investors, with which it would have bought INPA’s Bolivia operations and set up new business operations in the forest, according to the email.

The family were concerned that the sale of the assets in Bolivia was causing Paul Roosenboom a great deal of stress

But in July 2025, the foreign affairs ministry official informed the negotiators that Bom Futuro had outbid them.

“The sudden sale to Bom Futuru [sic] is a slap in the face for Amazonas for Life,” he wrote.

Amazonas For Life declined to comment on the record.

A person connected to the parties involved, who was granted anonymity for fear of repercussions, told Follow the Money that the Roosenboom family had likely chosen Bom Futuro because they were worried that the talks with Rabobank, financial institution Invest International, and Dutch development bank FMO would take too long.

Aerial view of Chiquitania

“The family were concerned that the sale of the assets in Bolivia was causing Paul Roosenboom a great deal of stress. He wanted to sell everything as quickly as possible,” the person said.

Citing a confidentiality clause, the Roosenbooms declined to comment. In November 2025, Paul Roosenboom told Mongabay that he no longer had the necessary resources to maintain the forest.

Facilitating the deal

Losing out on Bom Futuro was not the only problem Rabobank has faced for the sale.

Just at the time that Bom Futuro acquired the forest, a Rabobank compliance officer, Frederico Nascimento, worked on implementing the deal between Rabobank’s competitor, Bom Futuro, and the Roosenbooms.

The Brazilian, who lives in the Netherlands, had been with Rabobank for barely a week.

Records from the Dutch Chamber of Commerce show that, while he was working for Rabobank at the time that the sale went through in November 2025, Nascimento was also the sole director of H2B Holding, the company founded by the Maggi Scheffer family that bought the land.

“I trusted the person I spoke with”

According to a person connected to the negotiations, Rabo Carbon Bank reported the conflict of interest involving one of Rabobank’s own employees internally, after which the bank launched an investigation.

Rabobank declined to comment on individual employees or customers, and did not reply to questions about the investigation.

By working for H2B Holding, Nascimento facilitated the acquisition of the INPA-forest by the Maggi Scheffer family, he admitted to FTM.

In a telephone interview, Nascimento said that in the summer of 2025, when the deal with Bom Futuro was finalised, he was approached by “a very good friend” from Brazil who was working closely with the new owners. He said he was not authorised to reveal the identity of this friend.

This friend asked, Nascimento told FTM, whether he “would be able to help with H2B” in the Netherlands. Nascimento said he thought he was contributing to “something good”, namely maintaining the protection of the Bolivian forest and ensuring the takeover was handled correctly from an administrative point of view.

“I was mainly hired to be the representative of the company before the Dutch tax authorities and local accountants,” said Nascimento.

“I trusted the person I spoke with,” he added. According to him, it was never about the money: “It didn’t make me rich.”

He said that he stepped down as a director of H2B Holding after Rabobank became aware of the situation earlier this year. But by then, the deal had already been finalised months earlier.

Nascimento did not elaborate on what he knew of the new owners and their plans for the forest, but said that he had received assurances that no illegal deforestation would take place on the land.

“When people read about Bom Futuro or when they read about the family, the first thing they think about is the agricultural impact. That was the first question I asked” he said. “I didn't want to get involved with that for sure.”

Tech giants fight EU crackdown on video games that push children to spend

Alexander Fanta, Yannic Hannebohn — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

This article in 1 minute

What’s the news?

Lobbyists from the video gaming industry are pushing back heavily against a draft EU law – set to be proposed by the European Commission by the end of this year – that could limit gambling-like features designed to promote in-game spending.
Consumer groups are in favour of such regulation, which they say is necessary to protect children from manipulative and predatory tactics.
But the gaming sector has found support in Brussels, feeding a turf war within the Commission. According to a document obtained by Follow the Money, a high-ranking official wants the EU to “promote” its tech sector, and protect video gaming from more stringent regulation.

Why does this matter?

Video gaming is a sector worth $280 billion in revenue this year, and expected to grow massively in the coming years.
A regulatory crackdown could have significant implications for the industry’s business model, including major video gaming publishers in Europe from Ubisoft to Supercell.

How was this investigated?

FTM spoke with industry representatives, consumer advocates, and experts about the practices of the video gaming industry.
Through collaboration with Die Zeit, NGOs, and a freedom of information request, FTM also obtained documents about the Commission’s regulatory discussions with an EU member state and two major industry players.

This article is part of an ongoing series.

The EU Files

Claire Lo’s favourite video game keeps asking her for money.

Genshin Impact immerses Lo in a Japanese-style anime world where she can explore vast territories, fight enemies, and follow ever-evolving storylines. Over the years, she has spent countless hours traversing the game’s landscapes.

“It is a bit of a love-hate relationship I have with the game,” said Lo, an academic researcher from Taiwan in her mid-twenties who lives in Belgium.

While the game has “provided great story-building and fun open-world exploration”, Lo explained how it also pushed her to shell out hundreds of euros to keep playing.

She is far from alone.

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Consumer groups and academics warn that video gamers – many of them children – are being increasingly pressured by games that are free to play initially, but designed to encourage repeated spending.

This is done through the use of in-game currencies to buy virtual items known as loot boxes, whose contents are often unknown until after purchase.

“I met teenagers who spent €15,000 on loot boxes”

This business model has become commonplace in gaming, providing a major revenue stream for the sector.

Overall, the industry is expected to generate more than $280 billion in revenue this year, according to an estimate by the Boston Consulting Group, and grow by more than 25% by 2030.

Despite its rapid expansion, gaming has so far avoided the stringent regulation that the European Union has imposed on parts of the digital economy. But that could soon change.

The issue of how to regulate video gaming is now at the centre of a political battle in Brussels, as the European Commission considers a new law to crack down on what critics describe as manipulative and predatory practices.

However, the gaming lobby is fighting back, arguing that strict regulations would stifle innovation and harm one of Europe’s rare tech success stories.

The industry has mobilised scores of lobbyists in Brussels to fight measures that could strike at the heart of its business model, and severely hurt its profits.

It has already achieved some success: a document obtained by Follow the Money and published in collaboration with German outlet Die Zeit shows that the sector has found a powerful ally within the European Commission who opposes a stricter regulatory approach.

This could create division within the Commission, and set the stage for a major showdown later this year over how Europe should protect children from harmful gaming practices.

‘Buying all the time’

Gaming has developed into an economic juggernaut, not just rivaling but overtaking traditional entertainment sectors such as film and music.

As the industry has skyrocketed, parts of the sector have shifted their revenue model from sales to monthly subscriptions and purchases made within games, said Thomas Iversen, a senior policy advisor at the Norwegian Consumer Council, a government agency.

Examples include mobile games such as Clash of Clans, sports titles including FIFA, and first-person shooters like Call of Duty.

In-game purchases may have generated between €20 billion and €40 billion in revenue in Europe alone last year, Iversen estimated. Loot boxes accounted for a large share of that total, he added.

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Spending money within video games has been normalised in recent years, said Markus Meschik, an academic and head of the media education centre Enter in Austria.

“The new generation of gamers is growing up with the idea of buying all the time”, rather than a one-off purchase of a game, according to Meschik, who gives lectures at schools about responsible gaming.

This was particularly visible in mobile games, which often rely on so-called dark patterns to push young gamers into spending more, he said.

More than half of schoolchildren have made in-game purchases - frequently lootboxes, according to a survey of 2,600 Austrian students aged between 10 and 19, which was co-authored by Meschik.

But while most young people spend only modest amounts, a small minority lapses into addictive behaviour and shell out large sums.

“I met teenagers who spent €15,000 on loot boxes,” Meschik said.

For years, consumer advocacy groups have warned that these mechanisms are highly problematic, citing their strong resemblance to gambling and their potential to financially exploit players – particularly children.

Gaming’s regulatory reckoning?

For decades, the industry has largely operated under voluntary rules and faced little binding regulation, according to Iversen of the Norwegian Consumer Council.

“The gaming industry has gone under lawmakers’ and regulators’ radar for many years,” he told FTM.

But that light-touch era may be coming to an end. Brussels has grown increasingly concerned about the problems created by the gaming industry’s business model – and is now preparing to curb some of its more controversial practices.

Policymakers are about to deliver a critical blow to the sector

One key measure is the Digital Fairness Act (DFA) – set to be formally proposed before the end of the year – which aims to tackle issues including addictive design features that push consumers to spend more money within video games.

The European Parliament has pushed for the law to include a ban on “gambling-like features”.

Commissioner Michael McGrath, responsible for democracy, justice, the rule of law and consumer protection, told the Parliament in May that his officials were weighing a “range of options” – from transparency requirements for the use of in-game currencies to a complete ban on loot boxes in games that are accessible to children.

Separately, European consumer authorities last year sought to strengthen enforcement of existing consumer rules on gaming companies by publishing “key principles” on virtual currencies within games.

For example, the real-world price of purchases made with in-game currencies should be clearly displayed, and consumers should have the same right to withdraw from purchases as they do in traditional markets.

While regulators maintain that these standards already carry legal weight for gaming firms, actual enforcement has remained elusive.

In a May address to the European Parliament, Commissioner McGrath acknowledged that recent EU-wide consumer complaints – including those regarding virtual currencies – had failed to result in a single financial penalty.

Tech regulation’s gaming blind spot

Previous major tech legislation from Brussels has largely left the gaming industry untouched.

The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) – which entered into force in 2022 – imposes stringent obligations on social media firms such as Instagram and TikTok. But most gaming companies have escaped the scope of these stricter requirements for “very large online platforms”.

So far, only Roblox has been brought under direct supervision of the European Commission.

It will now be “held to a higher standard of scrutiny and accountability in the European Union”, Commissioner Henna Virkkunen said in August.

This means that Roblox will have to assess and mitigate “systemic risks” related to the dissemination of illegal content, the negative effects on minors, and users’ physical and mental well-being.

However, other games and gaming platforms have largely avoided similar attention.

Consumer advocates argue that the DSA is only one part of the puzzle when it comes to protecting children from harmful practices in video games.

“Of course, we welcome that regulators address platform specific issues in video games through the DSA”, said Urs Buscke, senior legal officer at the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC).

Yet the DSA was designed primarily with social media platforms in mind. According to Buscke, its core obligations for protecting users do not cover many video games.

Industry warns against killing cash cow

In response to the regulatory drive, gaming industry giants such as Microsoft – the maker of Xbox – have deployed scores of lobbyists to meet with Commission officials.

According to publicly available lobby data, industry voices have far outweighed those of consumer groups. Of the 186 meetings the Commission has held on the Digital Fairness Act (DFA) since January 2025, less than 10% involved non-commercial actors such as NGOs and consumer advocates.

Gaming sector lobbyists are “bombarding officials with negative views on the need for a DFA”, said Olivier Hoedeman of the lobby watchgroup Corporate Europe Observatory.

“There’s every reason to worry that this will result in a less ambitious DFA,” he added.

Top industry figures have also been publicly vocal in their criticism of the proposed reforms.

Ilkka Paananen, the CEO of Finnish developer Supercell – known for mobile games such as Clash of Clans – has warned Brussels to “not kill one of Europe’s few tech success stories”.

“Policymakers are about to deliver a critical blow to the sector, despite calling out for Europe to become more competitive on the global stage,” he wrote in an open letter last October.

The sector has demanded that companies be allowed to self-regulate, and argued that parents should be responsible for protecting their children.

For example, in reply to a public consultation by the Commission on the DFA last year, Microsoft said it strongly cautioned against a blanket ban on loot boxes for minors.

“Parents can already control all in-game purchases, including lootboxes, through existing parental control tools,” it said.

Microsoft has also pushed back against potential requirements to display the real-world price of in-game purchases made with virtual currencies.

An indication of the real world value may not be possible, “especially on small smartphone screens”, a Microsoft lobbyist told the Commission in January 2024. The comments were revealed from meeting minutes obtained via an access request by the NGO Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO).

Another major gaming company, Electronic Arts, told the Commission in October 2025 that removing loot boxes would force it to “completely re-engineer” its popular football game – formerly known as FIFA and now called EA Sports FC – according to minutes of that meeting obtained by Die Zeit and shared with FTM.

These arguments are echoed by major gaming companies and trade groups such as Video Games Europe. They point to a self-regulatory system that has been in place for over two decades, resting on the assumption that information to parents about individual games will suffice to mitigate risks to minors.

“Regulation should never be so strict that it would impede the fun and the beauty of video games”

“We are capable of solving this quicker than regulation can,” said Dirk Bosmans, head of Pan-European Game Information (PEGI), an industry body that provides age recommendations and content descriptors for games across the continent.

Bosmans noted that, since June, an update to PEGI’s age rating system takes into account whether a game features in-game currencies, loot boxes, and a “safe” gaming environment.

But age labels alone cannot prevent harm to consumers, according to Buscke of the consumer association BEUC.

“Unfair commercial practices do not become fair merely because companies inform consumers about them in advance,” he told FTM.

“To effectively protect consumers, we need the Digital Fairness Act to introduce binding rules that put an end to these practices.”

Division within the Commission

Commission officials are still wrestling with how stringent the new rules for the gaming industry should be under the DFA.

Responsibility for drafting the legislation sits primarily with Commissioner McGrath’s Directorate-General for Justice, which also drew up the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Yet a rival Commission department, the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology – known as “DG Connect” – has grown in influence and power over the past decade, and is seen by some as an ally of Big Tech, said Céleste Bonnamy, a political scientist at Sciences Po Lille.

DG Connect – which is led by the Commission’s tech chief Henna Virkkunen – is expected to influence the draft law as it is finalised in the coming months, said Bonnamy, who is studying tech lobbying.

While McGrath’s department is mulling stricter measures, DG Connect’s Deputy Director-General Renate Nikolay told the Danish government behind closed doors in January that she was sceptical of regulating the sector too tightly through the DFA.

Instead, in language echoing the gaming industry’s lobbying, Nikolay said the Commission should “promote an important and actually growing part of the EU’s tech sector”, according to a Danish government memo obtained by FTM via a freedom of information request.

Nikolay discussed “solutions involving strengthened co-regulation” in the style of a “beefed-up PEGI”, in which “industry standards could be directly incorporated into legislation”, the memo shows.

Her position is hardly surprising given the “more industry-friendly stance” of her department and its political master, Executive Vice-President Virkkunen, said Hoedeman of CEO.

Should DG Connect’s influence weaken or even derail the DFA, Hoedeman said it would be a huge victory for tech firms, “but tragic for the society as major societal problems caused by Big Tech would then be left unsolved”.

In response to a detailed list of questions from FTM about the legislation, industry lobbying and Nikolay’s comments from the memo, the Commission did not directly address them.

Instead, a spokesperson merely said the “Commission is working intensely on the Digital Fairness Act”.

While the lobbying battle rages on in Brussels, Lo – the Belgium-based gamer – has turned her passion into an academic pursuit.

In her recent master’s thesis in law, she examined consumer protection in video games through the lens of international law. After graduating, she completed an internship with a consumer organisation in Brussels.

Even so, Lo said it was difficult to regulate loot boxes because such design features are so deeply woven in the gaming industry’s business model. The same mechanisms that make games addictive are often the very ones that make them so fun to play, she said.

“Regulation should never be so strict that it would impede the fun and the beauty of video games,” Lo added.

Less red tape, more pesticides? Bee careful what you ‘simplify’

Alexander Fanta, Leonie Kijewski, Peter Teffer, Zach Boren — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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Good morning readers,

Welcome back to Bureau Brussels – your weekly deep dive into the power plays, backroom deals, and investigations shaping life for millions of people across the bloc.

What’s in store this week?

Farming lobbies’ strategy to weaken pesticide rules
A new social network gets Ursula von der Leyen’s approval
The EU Ombudsman opens another case over rejected FTM records request

Story of the week

Less red tape, more pesticides? Bee careful what you ‘simplify’

Eight years ago, the EU banned neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides linked to bee deaths. For environmentalists, it was one of Brussels’ hardest-won conservation victories. For DBV, Germany’s biggest farming union, it was, in its own words, an error “to learn from”.

Now, farming lobbies want another go.

Europe’s pesticide reduction ambitions are steadily moving backwards. The bloc’s plan to halve pesticide use was scrapped. A pledge to stop exporting chemicals banned in Europe was derailed. Now, under the banner of “simplification”, lobby groups are pushing to loosen the rules that decide which pesticides can stay on the European market.

On 15 July, representatives of Copa Cogeca, the EU’s most powerful agriculture lobby, and DBV, as well as CropLife Europe met policymakers at Copa Cogeca’s Brussels headquarters.

Earlier this year, the investigative journalism project GRILLED revealed an archive of Copa Cogeca’s internal meetings showing how the group worked to undermine parts of the Green Deal, including its pesticide targets. Now, reporters at GRILLED have obtained the presentations behind that meeting, laying out what Copa Cogeca, CropLife Europe, and DBV wanted from policymakers.

Their pitch was simple: use the EU’s fast-moving Food and Feed Safety Omnibus, sold as ‘simplification’, to loosen Europe’s pesticide approval rules.

At the core of their push is a rule that brings pesticide active ingredients back under scrutiny every 10 to 15 years. The European Commission’s own reforms would already scrap those automatic expiry dates, allowing approvals to continue indefinitely unless new safety concerns emerge.

The lobby wants Brussels to go further.

Copa Cogeca wants “mutual recognition” EU-wide of pesticide authorisations “without having any national restrictions”. That could make it much harder for individual countries to block products already approved elsewhere in the bloc.

Some CropLife members want that recognition to become automatic, further reducing the power of the national regulators to object.

DBV, meanwhile, seized the occasion to bring the neonic ban back into the conversation.

“By teaming up with the pesticide lobby in this push for deregulation,” says Nina Holland of Corporate Europe Observatory, Copa Cogeca and DBV are “scoring an own-goal for farmers”.

CropLife insists it isn’t advocating for the removal of any safeguards. DBV said it was not seeking a return of banned substances, only “an official assessment of whether the restriction achieved what it was adopted to achieve”. Copa Cogeca didn’t comment.

Zach Boren

Other news from the EU bubble

How to make Ursula join your socials

How did W Social, the new European social network, get the Commission president to join – and effectively endorse – it just months after its launch? W Social’s selling points are its built-in ID verification system and a strict “no bots” policy. According to documents we obtained, its founders pushed the Commission hard in lobby meetings.

And just like that, von der Leyen was on board, according to an internal memo. Yet, why W Social made the cut – while more established and comparable European decentralised networks such as Mastodon didn’t – is unclear from the files.

Alexander Fanta

Dutch defence ministry blacklists travel app

Over the summer, you might have – like 23 million other users worldwide – uploaded a few photos and tracked your movements on travel app Polarsteps. The problem? FTM reporters were able to download sensitive data of millions of people, including soldiers. That’s a massive security risk – and has prompted the Dutch defence ministry to blacklist the app.

“The application will soon no longer be installable on defence devices and will be automatically removed if it is already installed,” a spokesperson said.

Leonie Kijewski

Ombudsman acts again after FTM reporting

The European Ombudsman has opened an inquiry into the refusal of our request to access reports about EIT Manufacturing. The EU’s anti-fraud agency, OLAF, had discovered “serious irregularities” in the so-called knowledge and innovation community (KIC), a private EU-funded entity. But OLAF refused to give us insight into what those irregularities were. The Ombudsman has asked OLAF to inspect the documents.

Peter Teffer

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That’s why one critic calls it “another case of carbon credits being issued where they shouldn’t be”.

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Europe’s green hydrogen hopes suffer fresh setback in Namibia

Europe’s green energy poster child could become an oil powerhouse. Backed by €1 billion in promised EU funding for green hydrogen, Namibia was meant to help power the bloc’s energy transition. But those ambitions are stalling, with large-scale exports to Europe now looking increasingly doubtful.

Meanwhile, Namibia’s oil and gas sector is gathering pace. A fossil fuel lobby group has a blunt message for the country: “drill, baby, drill”. And some EU-backed infrastructure built for green industrialisation could also end up benefiting fossil fuels. Can Europe have it both ways with Namibia’s green hydrogen and oil boom?

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