Dataharvest 2024 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

In 2023, ICIJ, Paper Trail Media and 67 media partners published Cyprus Confidential, which exposed how Cyprus firms provided services to help key backers of Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime shelter their wealth and then, as Russia invaded Ukraine, hide billions of dollars in assets from the threat of sanctions. ICIJ analyzed millions of documents to identify nearly 800 companies and trusts owned or controlled by sanctioned Russians. In this session, we will share how we unmasked powerful Russians and their assets in the Cyprus Confidential project. We'll explain our methodology, and explore the difficulties of working on sanctions-related investigations.