| Hi there, This week began on a sombre note with vigils in London, Berlin, Brussels, Valetta and elsewhere to mark sixth months since Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was brutally murdered by a car bomb. There’s no doubt that she was killed because of her courageous investigative journalism, much of which focussed on corruption and organised crime in her home country. Now, a group of 45 journalists from 18 organisations in 15 countries led by Forbidden Stories, and facilitated by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, have teamed up to form The Daphne Project and keep her reporting alive. The Project has published details of the investigation into her killing – whoever ordered it may still be at large – and shown that Daphne had been probing Malta’s Golden Visa programme, arguing it was riddled with cronyism, bribery and kickbacks. Reporters have obtained a confidential government report that alleges that three Russian applicants, who ultimately obtained Golden Visas in 2016, paid over US$200,000 in bribes to an offshore company that, according to reporters, is directed by a business associate of the Prime Minister of Malta. This example points to just one of several corruption risks posed by these types of Golden Visa programmes: discretionary decision-making and political capture. It also highlights another corruption risk that we’ve been talking a lot about over the past few years: money laundering. All over the world, anonymously owned companies make corrupt deals far too easy to pull off. This week we released a report showing how the G20 nations still have a long way to go to end secrecy around company ownership. Until they do, they will continue to facilitate the flow of corrupt cash through their borders. | 
