ISN’T IT IRONIC? the murder of a young journalist and his fiancée … and the response

6 March 2019 – Just over one year ago the Slovakian journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova, were shot dead in their home. He was investigating political corruption linked to an Italian mafia group at the time of his murder, according to a summary of his “last investigation”. More on that in a moment.

Yes, a young investigative reporter/journalist and his fiancée are shot dead; tens of thousands of people took to the streets in solidarity, and the ensuing investigation toppled a prime minister. The next logical response?

In Slovakia, apparently, the response was tough new media rules that require obliging journalists to give politicians the right of reply, and fining the journalists if they don’t comply. Said a journalist friend of mine who attended a Bratislava conference on the fallout from the murder:

The irony is that the response to their killing is a move seen by journalists as a threat to their activity. It is the opposite of what should be done. 

Yeah, yeah. It led to the subsequent downfall of former Prime Minister Robert Fico. Big shit. One can only hope that what the current Slovak President, Andrej Kiska. told the conference rings true:

I will veto the new media code if it gets through parliament, where it is now due for a second reading, We need critical, independent and professional journalists more than ever. 

He also said he had decided not to run for re-election because Slovakia needed a “clean slate”. That’s a somewhat different tone from former Prime Minster Fico who while in office famously called reporters “slimy snakes,” “anti-Slovak prostitutes” and “a toilet spider.”

Last week thousands of Slovaks took to the streets again in Bratislava to commemorate the murdered journalist and his fiancée, repeating the demands that the protesters have been voicing throughout 2018. 100s of others from other towns across Slovakia and also abroad, joined in.

Ján was working on a story about the ‘Ndrangheta, the notorious Calabrian-based mafia group that had crossed into Slovakia. He showed the group’s deep ties to Slovakian politics, and EU farm subsidy fraud. Ján worked the most dangerous beat, the nexus of organized crime, a growing area of journalism. In some places, it’s all that’s left to report. Maltese blogger and journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car bomb just a few months before Ján, was all too familiar with the dangers of it.

I wrote about her death, and the e-discovery software she used in her work, in a 2-part article which you can access here: http://projectcounsel.media/Daphne-Caruana-Galizia

Sometimes I feel utterly powerless. Reporters are not supposed to be killed for their work. It’s a breakdown of our values and social norms. But this is our lives today. Criminal groups provide global reach and money laundering skills, not to mention drugs, prostitutes, assassins, and all the other elements of a modern autocratic state.

In return, they are protected. About 20 to 30 years ago, organized crime globalized with the help of what we call the “criminal services industry” – the Western banks, law firms, registration agents, Golden Visa peddlers, business intelligence firms, hedge funds and lobbyists who service their needs. Through their new friends, these Western actors met corrupt politicians and businessmen from the east.

Their expertise opened up new opportunities for corruption and hiding wealth. Everyone became very wealthy. Countries like Hungary, Russia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and most of the states of Central Asia are run by political parties that use organized crime as part of their governing structures. And every country in the West is explicit and complicit in all of it.

This profoundly undemocratic money moved to the West, with impunity, safely laundered and hidden in hedge funds, investment banks, and high-end real estate. It then became increasingly political, investing in everything from Brexit to extremist and nationalist groups. The money has undermined democracy while supporting increasingly plutocratic laws and goals that worked in their favor. As I note in a forthcoming article, U.S. authorities are still treating Russia manipulation of social media as the biggest threat. My, God, they are passed that. They are pouring millions into U.S. right-wing hate groups. Why bother with Facebook?

Since most of this crime takes place across international boundaries, and law enforcement is mostly restricted to national boundaries, investigative reporters and civil society groups are the only natural enemy of these bad actors. Ján was part of that family of reporters who track crime and corruption globally. They have almost no resources. They are soft targets and easily killed. Since justice in many of these same corrupt countries is political, those guilty will likely not face full accountability. It’s a recipe for more violence. These deaths are painful beyond words.

Jano was a rare reporter. He had a passion for the work that allowed him to overcome its many challenges.

www.occrp.org/en

When the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project got access to the Panama Papers, he left so quickly to pour over the files in Prague that, said one friend, “he forgot his toothbrush and ended up sleeping on the floor of our partner’s office. He was hell-bent on becoming an expert on freedom of information requests and could coax hard-to-find records out of online databases”. 

The death of someone with such talent and personality is an indescribable loss. We miss his passion, his research, his experience every day. He would have written fantastic stories.

There’s nothing I fear more than getting a call like that one I received one year ago. But I know it will come again.