Africa-Press – Namibia. ABOUT 20 Namibians have been named in an investigation spurred by the data leak of clients from one of the world’s largest private banks, Credit Suisse, in what may prove to be one of the biggest leaks to date.
This is according to the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) Africa editor, Beauregard Tromp, who spoke more about the global investigative project on Desert Radio yesterday.
While over 18 000 accounts are exposed in the investigation, Tromp said this is merely a snapshot of the full list of people linked to the Swiss bank.
“Critically, banking information is secretive. We don’t want to mess with that and we have no reason to, unless there is an overwhelming public interest argument to be made.
“So, there are certain names which we have focused on because they have been convicted of criminal activity or they have been flagged or came up in media reports for having done something nefarious,” he said.
Tromp added that the group’s approach was “quite conservative” to ensure that the exposé did not have any cracks that could be exploited.
“We have taken quite a conservative approach because it’s important that when we build our body of evidence that we for the largest part can say this is the bank and these people who are involved here are likely criminally liable.
“So we went to great lengths with our partners […] We wanted to make sure that the information that we presented was above scrutiny,” he said.
The investigation reveals that a number of clients of the Swiss bank are individuals involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes.
According to OCCRP, the data leaked from the bank reveals that it catered to dozens of criminals, dictators, intelligence officials, sanctioned parties and political actors with outsized wealth.
OCCRP is one of the main news entities that spearheaded the investigation, alongside over 40 media houses from around the globe.
The Namibian is one of the media organisations that partnered with the OCCRP in this investigation.
Tromp said the cross border investigation facilitated through the project and its partners is a game-changer for investigative journalism.
“We’ve got a growing culture of investigative journalism. It is becoming more and more critical for work throughout the world and especially in Africa, where we sometimes have governments who seem to run away with people’s money.
“It’s important for us to have this kind of collaboration because we’re seeing that criminals are becoming more and more clever, so we also have to be a bit more clever and collaborate with our colleagues across borders. The impediment to that is money,” Tromp said.
For More News And Analysis About Namibia Follow Africa-Press
