Here’s how OpenLux was done, a transnational investigation amid the pandemic

“Hello, I have an interesting topic for you. Please let’s talk tomorrow “, An editor of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) which was thousands of miles away wrote at the last minute. The post arrived in mid-May, as the world was still adjusting to quarantines and long hours at home. The anxiety weighed heavily. It was the first step towards what was to become “OpenLux”.

This survey on the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, however, recorded a facet different from the others in which the team of THE NATION. In addition to the revelations about this top secret tax haven in the very heart of Europe, it turned out to be the first global collaborative journalism project born, worked and published in times of pandemic.

Before knowing the data, the proposal already looked promising: the French daily Le Monde had managed to extract 3.3 million documents of the Luxembourg public register, had processed them and thus made it possible, for the first time, to search for the names of persons among the documents of 260,000 commercial companies. For this reason, and with some interesting cases in hand, the OCCRP convened THE NATION and a dozen media from other parts of the world.

It was eight months in the Luxembourg keyhole. “Luxembourg is only the gateway. The work is inside,” sums up Nathan Jaccard, editor-in-chief of OCCRP who, with Antonio Baquero, coordinated the project for Latin America.

OpenLux added another notable difference from the previous ten global leaks that the team at THE NATION, which ranged from WikiLeaks to Panama Papers, and FinCen files to Lava Jato. For the first time, the raw materials to study were not emails revealing confessions, nor bearer share certificates from famous undercover owners, or secret bank reports. This time it was sales, sales and other sales.

From this starting point, i.e. from the data and numbers of commercial companies operating in Luxembourg The challenge was to rebuild the most complex offshore corporate structures in the world. Because those numbers were the trigger for the search for properties, vehicles and other assets that could be as far from Luxembourg as they are from Argentina. An example? The research you publish today THE NATION on the Corach family, who placed an apartment in Paris and another in Punta del Este behind a network of paper companies.

The investigations, however, started with a premise: to focus on Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) or those figures of clear public interest. This has been agreed with the OCCRP partners, although this may be a limitation, as happened with the data for Argentina. Most Argentines who appear as final beneficiaries in Luxembourg they are unknown citizens, outside of awareness parameters.

Certain names of political resonance, on the contrary, emerged from the documents analyzed. This was the case of one of the brothers of former president Mauricio Macri, Gianfranco, with an investment in wind farms developed through a complex network of companies that involves five links before reaching the land, in the province. by Chubut.

In both cases, Gianfranco Macri and Corach are not only politically exposed persons, but both They are under investigation by federal justice for the alleged commission of crimes that could affect public funds.

With these premises outlined by the OCCRP, research has intensified in the last four months of 2020. A second wave of possible data related to Argentines arrived in September, when the research team THE NATION was dedicated to FinCEN files. And from November, calls, chats, and consultations were daily.

The website of the Luxembourg public register began to receive hundreds of requests to download information on the identity of shareholders and the balance sheets of each company, often Argentina. This information has been digested into drafts of text, handwritten diagrams and visualizations for the sole purpose of understanding the meaning of structures complex which, at times, looks like dead end mazes.

After dealing with the figures and these financial patterns, came another difficult step, which combines surprises, achievements and frustrations: to seek information in the most unexpected countries of the world either through a public record, a phone call or ring the doorbell to get the last one. data before closing.

When all the work seemed finished, after eight months of work and with several articles already approved by the editors, the Checking the facts:a 14 hour session in front of the computer to verify every piece of information and even every sigh that the reader might give while diving into OpenLux.

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