Tag: News

Russian tycoon Vitaly Orlov is suing The Barents Observer, a small Norwegian news outlet, over its reporting on sanctions against his fishing company. 

The Barents Observer is a six-person non-profit newsroom in Kirkenes, a town of about 7,000 people in Norway’s far north. But the lawsuit isn’t taking place there — or even in Norway. Instead, Orlov has lodged a defamation suit in the High Court of London.

“We don’t even have money for plane tickets to go to the court,” said Editor in Chief Thomas Nilsen.

“It’s just not possible for us to defend ourselves against all of the claims,” he told OCCRP’s Norwegian media partner, NRK, adding that if Orlov is awarded some legal costs, The Barents Observer “will go bankrupt.” 

Orlov’s fishing company, Norebo JSC, said in a statement provided to OCCRP that the choice of London as a venue for the lawsuit was related to the fact that The Barents Observer publishes in English.

“The Barents Observer is a Norwegian publication that publishes in English and now complains at being sued in England. This is the very country The Barents Observer has courted,” the company said.

The legal claim by Orlov’s lawyers, from the London firm Devonshires, states that The Barents Observer website received 190,000 hits from the U.K. in 2025, according to a web analytics firm. 

But U.K. readers make up only 5 percent of The Barents Observer readers, according to a letter the publication sent to the court. 

“It is difficult to understand the logic behind Vitaly Orlov bringing his grievances before a court in England,” The Barents Observer stated in its letter.

The Barents Observer noted that it is based in Norway, and that Norebo is already engaged in a lawsuit against the Norwegian government in response to its ban on company vessels using its territorial waters and ports.

Orlov is claiming damages as a result of “serious harm” to his reputation caused by five news stories published by The Barents Observer between May 2025 and January this year. The news reports covered the E.U. sanctioning of Norebo, but also included information about Orlov himself.

The E.U. sanctions notice does not mention Orlov, and he has not been sanctioned. The sanctions notice alleges that Norebo vessels showed “movement patterns [that] align with malign objectives.”

“The movement patterns have been linked, including by Member States and the authorities of third states, to the Russian state-sponsored surveillance campaign that employs inter alia, civilian fishing trawlers, to conduct espionage missions directed against civilian and military infrastructure in the North and Baltic Sea,” the sanctions notice states.

In the claim brought to the High Court of London on behalf of Orlov, Devonshires lawyers note that “Norebo disputes the designation and has brought annulment proceedings before the General Court of the European Union.”

Source: OCCRP · 2026-10-28

A U.S. federal court has sentenced a businessman to 15 years in prison for his role in running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded hundreds of investors out of millions of dollars. According to a statement from the Department of Justice, Edwin Brant Frost IV, the founder of a conservative, Christian lending firm in Georgia, defrauded more than 300 investors out of over $76 million in a massive Ponzi scheme. Frost, who was convicted of wire fraud in May after pleading guilty, will also have to pay back over $76 million in restitution to victims.

According to federal prosecutors, Frost’s now-defunct company, First Liberty Building and Loan, LLC, ran the Ponzi scheme between at least 2021 and July 2025. Frost scammed investors by claiming he was making high-interest, short-term “bridge loans” to small businesses. Prosecutors stated that after most of the bridge loans defaulted, Frost began using new investor funds to pay interest to existing investors, while secretly diverting at least $5 million for lavish personal purchases and political contributions.

Source: OCCRP · 2026-10-27

When a handful of university students first spilled onto the streets two years ago to protest the deadly collapse of a railway station canopy, Serbia’s state-run media dismissed them as unruly kids merely looking for an excuse to cut class.

They were grieving the 16 people crushed to death and demanding accountability for what they condemned as lethal state corruption and crony contracting, bearing banners that read: “Corruption kills” and “Your hands are bloody.”

But those scattered demonstrations soon swelled into a generational revolt. Over two relentless years, the students slept in occupied lecture halls, barnstormed rural strongholds where state television branded them foreign mercenaries, and punctured a pervasive climate of fear with biting wit and viral banners.

On Sunday, the kids actually did it.

In a stunning ballot-box upset that shattered Aleksandar Vučić’s 14-year grip on power, Serbia’s student-led movement defeated the Balkan country’s formidable ruling machine, clinching a triumph so historic that even its young architects were left reeling in disbelief.

“Fantastic. I can’t believe it,” Ilija Ratković, 30, told OCCRP. “A regime that ruled for 14 years, was corrupt, and killed people in Serbia is out.” He admitted he never expected Vučić to yield quietly: “I expected him to fight to the end.”

The movement’s slogan, “Students are winning” (Studenti pobeđuju), mobilized Serbians at home and abroad to vote for the “Students’ List”—a slate of candidates chosen by activists to replace Vučić’s state apparatus. Though convinced the regime would try to manipulate the count, organizers aimed to counter fraud through overwhelming turnout, operating on a simple premise: elections can be stolen, but not in a landslide.

“The higher the turnout, the less chance he has to steal it,” one voter who identified himself as David told OCCRP ahead of the poll.

Then came Sunday. Even after Serbia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs adjusted overseas polling hours to align with Belgrade’s time zone, thousands of diaspora Serbs lined up outside embassies and consulates in Australia and the United States in the dead of night. Some traveled thousands of kilometers from Brisbane to Sydney. In New York, voters showed up at 2:00 AM singing defiant songs, with several wearing pajamas, bathrobes, and sleep masks to mock a rule they viewed as blatant voter suppression.

Inside Serbia, queues at polling stations stretched around city blocks. Voters brought sandwiches and flasks of tea and coffee, waiting patiently for hours to cast their ballots.

A video circulating on social media on Monday perhaps best captured that determination: just one minute before polls were set to close, a man was filmed carrying a woman wearing house slippers toward a polling station entrance. “She delivered a baby two days ago!” he shouted to the people at the door, as another bystander rushed over to help carry her inside. She was the final voter admitted to the station.

“Change requires participation. Citizens who do not participate in the democratic process – not in the public square through protest and engaged debate, nor through the ballot box – will achieve nothing,” political analyst Jasmin Mujanovic wrote in a commentary.

With turnout approaching 70 percent—nearing a historic record—Vučić did the unthinkable roughly an hour and a half after polls closed at 8:00 PM. Preempting the official election commission tally, he conceded defeat from party headquarters, announcing that based on his party’s samples, the youth-led Students’ List had won decisively, projecting roughly 2.2 million votes for the “List” compared to 1.72 million for his party. 

His admission unleashed an immediate explosion of jubilation across the country. Car horns blared, red flares illuminated squares, and crowds of weeping, laughing students spilled into the autumn night, dancing well past dawn.

Asked how she felt as the news broke, Ana Novak, 54, said she was “relieved, very happy, ecstatic.” She, too, had doubted Vučić would concede.

“I’m really hoping for a change—for a normal state, for a normal life in Serbia,” said Novak, who lives in Belgium with her family and is now considering moving back.

As morning arrived, the magnitude of the shift began to sink in across the capital. During a live news broadcast from Belgrade downtown, a passerby interrupted a reporter who in her report mentioned the movement’s signature battle cry: “Students are winning!”

“No,” the man interjected with a smile before walking away. “Students have won.”

Source: OCCRP · 2026-10-26

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced on Monday the arrest of nine people in Nigeria as part of an international operation targeting cybercrime scam centers. According to a statement by FBI Director, Kash Patel, the operation resulted in identifying a total of $11 million in “potentially freezable funds” across multiple countries.

The crackdown, code-named Operation Blackout, saw law enforcement confiscate 53 electronic devices used in the cybercrime operations. Patel added that the operation is aimed at dismantling international cybercriminal networks responsible for “stealing billions from Americans.”

Source: OCCRP · 2026-10-26