Have Australia’s wealthiest old families bought off the political process? Despite myriad attempts over the years to repeal the cosy “grandfathering” exemption, the billionaires are still permitted – like no other Australians – to keep their companies “dark”. Today Michael West Media unveils the first in a series of investigations by Luke Stacy and Stephanie Tran involving more than 5,000 corporate searches to find the people and the labyrinthine structures behind the Secret Rich List. Luke Stacey and Michael West report.



Five days later, FireEye published details about attacks using malware which it called SUNBURST; it said this malware had been used to hit both private and public entities, by corrupting the Orion network management software, a product of SolarWinds. 


Alleged SolarWinds attackers offer stolen Microsoft, Cisco source code for sale

 





Mathias Cormann only began learning English aged 23 ... opportunity," he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2014.


2 May 2014 — For the first two decades of his life, Mathias Cormann didn't speak a word of ... May 2, 2014 — 12.04pm ... " He's incredibly good at getting across the detail of his brief.


In Geneva, Israeli billionaire Beny Steinmetz is on trial for allegedly masterminding a “corruption pact” to secure lucrative rights to the Simandou iron ore mine in Guinea, one of the world’s poorest countries.

It’s unusual for such a case to make it to criminal court, and Steinmetz’s business associates in Europe and the United States are also facing charges for paving the way to bribe a wife of Guinea’s former president.

“The Simandou case is of enormous importance, as it is an extremely rare occurrence of company officials being held to account for classic bribery methods,” says journalist Daniel Balint-Kurti, who spent years investigating the scheme. “Skilled practitioners of the legal, financial and PR arts are central to enabling corrupt deals.”

Longtime ICIJ readers will be familiar with Steinmetz's ties to controversial mining operations — businesses linked to the tycoon were featured in our Swiss Leaks and Panama Papers investigations.

Reporter Will Fitzgibbon gives you a tour of the offshore “illusion” Swiss prosecutors say the defendants devised to pay the bribes, including a guest appearance by Mossack Fonseca and other details revealed in the Panama Papers.

DEUTSCHE BANK PAYS UP - AGAIN
To resolve an investigation into a foreign bribery scheme, the German bank agreed to pay $130 million and avoid criminal charges by entering a deferred prosecution agreement with U.S. authorities. It’s the latest penalty the bank has faced for alleged financial misconduct.

LESSONS FROM CONFIDENTIAL CLIENTS
The smallest stories to come out of FinCEN Files captured some of the biggest data lessons. Researcher Delphine Reuter explains how her team handled the small but complex dataset at the heart of the investigation.

 

 

We wouldn’t be able to control superintelligent machines Max-Planck-Gesellschaft