Putin’s pipeline: How the Kremlin outmaneuvered Western oil corporations to wrest management of huge flows of Kazakhstan’s crude

On a late August afternoon in 2021 the mooring grasp made a frantic name to a dispatcher at Russia’s largest port, Novorossiysk.

“Cease! Cease! Cease loading tanker Minerva Symphony!” he shouted.

However the injury had already been executed. A floating platform used to load oil onto the Greek tanker had malfunctioned, unleashing a six-foot-high jet of oil into the Black Sea, three miles off the Russian coast. The oil, which had been flowing by the pipeline that was the guts of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), gushed for practically a half hour earlier than staff had been in a position to cease it. It inched dangerously near a preferred seaside dozens of miles from the so-called Putin’s Palace, an extravagant residence reportedly utilized by the Russian president.

A full hour handed earlier than 306 staff, 18 ships, 4 oil-recovery programs and 9 specialised vessels with assortment tanks had been deployed. The oil slicked seven miles of shoreline, and by the following night it had unfold to between 20 and 32 sq. miles, threatening farmers, villagers, wildlife and vacationers. The cleanup lasted seven days, with solely about 45 tons of the spilled oil recovered out of a whole bunch misplaced, in line with a Russian courtroom ruling. After which the catastrophe received worse. A violent storm swept by the area with heavy rain and fierce winds, halting efforts to corral the oil, which, in line with eco-activists, had settled on the underside of the ocean.

The havoc within the water, which was finally a results of prioritizing earnings over security, was solely the newest adversity for the Western oil giants who way back had accepted the implications of doing enterprise in Russia and neighboring Kazakhstan.

Caspian Cabals, a brand new investigation by the Worldwide Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 26 media companions, exposes how the spill didn’t simply result in environmental injury, but in addition to allegations of monetary corruption and geopolitical threats. 5 whistleblowers have alleged in interviews with ICIJ that Western oil corporations’ dealings in Russia or Kazakhstan included improper funds in violation of the Overseas Corrupt Practices Act, a U.S. legislation that prohibits bribes to overseas officers.

The 939-mile pipeline, which has price billions of {dollars} since development started in 1999, carried hopes for worldwide cooperation in addition to future earnings for each the buyers and communities close to the pipeline. It was additionally a method to cut back Western dependence on the Center East. More and more, although, the pipeline’s Western homeowners, led by Chevron, needed to cozy as much as and buckle below Russian energy to safe their funding and maintain the oil flowing. Over 20 years, as Putin grew to become extra highly effective, strategic-minded and a rising risk to Western pursuits, Chevron and the opposite shareholders more and more ceded authority over the pipeline to the Russian president.

After the 2021 spill, the Western corporations wrote to CPC’s director basic to complain about Transneft and a string of “unfavourable milestones” — together with the oil spill, the primary within the pipeline’s historical past. Whereas their letter demanded solutions, Western executives had been confronting a brand new exhausting reality within the practically 30-year historical past of CPC: The solutions, when or in the event that they did come, could be too little, too late.

Caspian Cabals explores the rise of a crucial pipeline within the Caspian Sea area and the Kazakh oil fields that feed it. The 2-year investigation relies on tens of 1000’s of pages of confidential emails, firm displays and different oil {industry} data, audits, courtroom paperwork and regulatory filings, in addition to a whole bunch of interviews, together with with former firm staff and insiders. The investigation exposes a sample of problematic contracts and offers that illustrate how Western oil giants turned a blind eye to bribery dangers, potential conflicts of curiosity and value overruns. It reveals how Western oil firm cash has empowered anti-democratic actors in Kazakhstan, bolstered the neighboring regime of Vladimir Putin and enriched regional elites.

“It’s not simply the oil corporations who had been complicit — so was the U.S. authorities,” Edward C. Chow, a former government for Chevron Abroad Petroleum Ltd., stated about allegations of oil-industry corruption in Russia. “All of them knew, or they need to have recognized, and selected to look the opposite approach.”

For Chevron, there may be little turning again. The second largest U.S. oil firm — with its longtime house in San Ramon, Calif., and its middle of gravity and new headquarters in Houston — has one in all its greatest monetary property working by Russia and Kazakhstan. The corporate has stated it expects to see $4 billion of free money circulation subsequent 12 months and $5 billion in 2026 from its three way partnership on the Tengiz oil area in western Kazakhstan, which feeds the CPC pipeline. Chevron reported $21.4 billion in world internet revenue final 12 months. The corporate holds a 50 % stake within the Tengiz operation, which averages billions of {dollars} in yearly revenue. Chevron declined to say precisely how a lot it earns on its Kazakhstan or Russia operations.

In an announcement to ICIJ, Sally Jones, a senior media adviser for Chevron, stated Chevron and the worldwide oil corporations “have sought to offer crucial technical help to allow protected and dependable operations of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium.”

“Chevron is dedicated to moral enterprise practices, working responsibly, conducting its enterprise with integrity and in accordance with the legal guidelines and rules of every of the jurisdictions during which it operates,” she stated. She didn’t reply on to questions on Chevron’s position within the pipeline or complaints about overpriced contracts, alleged kickbacks or conflicts of curiosity.

Exxon didn’t reply to requests for remark, nor did the governments of Kazakhstan or Russia. A spokesman for Shell stated the corporate doesn’t tolerate bribery in any kind. An Eni spokesperson stated, “We’re dedicated to upholding the best requirements of transparency, moral conduct and environmental duty.” Eni referred questions concerning the pipeline to CPC, which didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark from ICIJ.

Transneft additionally didn’t reply.

The brand new ICIJ investigation additionally reveals Russia’s relentless quest for dominance over the Western oil corporations. Putin’s gradual management over the CPC — full with ultimatums and an unbreakable will to emerge on prime — aligned together with his bigger presence on the worldwide stage as a major minister and president who would assert his affect the place he noticed match. Whether or not it was invading Chechnya, Georgia or Ukraine, meddling in U.S. presidential elections, or making barely veiled threats of utilizing his nuclear arsenal, Putin noticed a approach to make use of CPC as a weapon in a long-standing and troubling rivalry with the West. And he was displaying the formidable adversary he would come to be.

‘To reward mates and punish enemies’

The Caspian pipeline originates on the 156-square-mile Tengiz oil area on the distant northeastern coast of the Caspian Sea, the most important lake on this planet. With some sections of pipe above floor and others no less than 23 toes underground, the road crosses treeless prairies and rivers in Kazakhstan, and mountains, rice paddies and cornfields in southern Russia. Greater than two-thirds of it’s on Russian territory. The pipeline, which is as much as 56 inches in diameter with color-coded identification marks, ends within the Black Sea at three orange buoys about three miles from the CPC pipeline’s terminal constructing. These floating platforms are anchored to the seabed about 165 toes under.

Kazakhstan, the second greatest nation within the Caspian area — and the one with essentially the most oil — shares lengthy borders with Russia to the north and northwest and China to the east.

Within the late ’80s, with Kazakhstan nonetheless a Soviet state, the potential for reshaping the geopolitics of a area wealthy in oil grew to become clear. The connection between the West and Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev was thawing. Gorbachev was in search of methods to revive his nation’s creaky financial system. Stifled by 70 years of dictatorship, the Soviet Union wanted Western cash and know-how. The West wanted oil.

America grew to become the primary nation to acknowledge Kazakhstan’s independence, below President George H.W. Bush in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. For  a long time since, U.S. presidents, diplomats and lobbyists have promoted the Caspian area as a useful resource bonanza, a New Persian Gulf.

Nearly in a single day, it appeared, the Caspian area took middle stage, displaying up on journal covers and even in a James Bond thriller a couple of Caspian pipeline. In Kazakhstan, U.S. officers at first sought to safe the nation’s nuclear weapons and assist Chevron, on the time the fourth largest U.S. oil firm, acquire entry to the Tengiz oil area. As oil corporations scrambled for Caspian stakes, Washington articulated new coverage aims comparable to enhancing business alternatives for U.S. corporations and selling the West’s free-market and different enterprise practices within the area.

The West additionally had hopes of liberating Caspian nations from dependence on Russia. However earlier than any of that might take maintain, there was a serious hurdle: learn how to get the Tengiz oil to world markets from the Caspian Sea bordering Kazakhstan, which was surrounded by nations that had been business rivals and had their very own oil transport routes.

James Giffen, a service provider banker, knew loads about coping with hurdles. He had began touring to Moscow in 1969 whereas consulting with American corporations fascinated by coming into the Soviet market. Soviet officers had recommended that he become involved in bringing oil area know-how and tools to the Soviet Union as a result of the way forward for the nation relied on the event of its oil and gasoline {industry}.

Within the spring of 1987, a golf accomplice, financier Nicholas Brady — who would quickly be named President Ronald Reagan’s Treasury secretary — provided to assist join Giffen with executives at Chevron. Chevron appeared greater than keen, in line with an account that Giffen, who died in 2022, gave to Columbia College’s Harriman Institute. The oil big was attempting to safe its future in an unsure time for Western oil corporations.

Inside days, Giffen stated, he and a colleague had been on a flight to San Francisco to satisfy Chevron’s chairman and CEO, George Keller. On the finish of the assembly, after two hours and lunch, Keller declared: “We’re in,” in line with Giffen.

Working for Chevron, Giffen introduced alongside politicians, lobbyists, attorneys, consultants, commerce teams and assume tanks utilized by Chevron and different oil corporations to advertise their new pursuits within the Caspian area.

Chevron executives courted Kazakh officers at a on line casino, at Disneyland, on a seaside in Spain. Within the Columbia interview, Giffen stated the oil corporations “made extravagant presents” to woo decision-makers, together with constructing stadiums for the Kazakhs, which he believed to be a violation of the Overseas Corrupt Practices Act. “It’s simply unbelievable what they did,” Giffen stated. “However no fees had been ever introduced in opposition to the oil corporations.”

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chevron and Giffen parted methods. Giffen went to work for the brand new Kazakh president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, as his chief oil negotiator and, prosecutors later alleged, his private banker.

Chevron’s abroad president, Richard Matzke, who initially joined Chevron as a geologist in Louisiana, had his sights on what he known as Kazakhstan’s “super-giant” Tengiz oil area, one of many world’s richest and deepest, on the northeast shore of the Caspian Sea.

In April 1993, after greater than 5 years of grueling negotiations, Chevron struck a cope with Kazakhstan to develop Tengiz. Kazakhstan and Chevron every received 50%. Chevron acquired a license to provide oil for 40 years by 2033. The three way partnership was known as Tengizchevroil. With that call, oil {industry} advisor Thane Gustafson wrote that Chevron “virtually wager the corporate” on Tengiz.

As oil executives from no less than 4 different Western oil corporations pushed to purchase chunks of the Kashagan and Karachaganak oil and gasoline fields in Kazakhstan, Giffen negotiated for Nazarbayev.

Between 1995 and 2000, Mercator Corp., the small service provider financial institution that Giffen based and managed, was paid about $67 million in “success charges,” and Giffen allegedly diverted $78 million from the oil corporations to 2 senior Kazakhstan officers, in line with 2003 indictments filed in U.S. federal courtroom. The officers had been President Nazarbayev and Nurlan Balgimbayev, who served first as Kazakhstan’s minister for oil and gasoline after which prime minister.

Prosecutors charged Giffen in a bribery scheme. A lot of the cash, they stated, was deposited in Swiss financial institution accounts. Balgimbayev allegedly used funds to purchase $180,000 price of diamond jewellery and $20,000 to order every week’s keep at a Swiss spa, the indictment stated. Giffen spent $80,000 on a Donzi speedboat for a Kazakh official and $30,000 for fur coats for Nazarbayev’s spouse and daughter, in line with the indictment. He paid for his daughter’s tuition at George Washington College, in Washington, out of the identical funds, the indictment stated. Neither Nazarbayev nor Balgimbayev was charged; Giffen pleaded responsible to a tax-related misdemeanor. However a choose declined to condemn him to jail after he testified that he acted with help from the CIA and the White Home to assist advance American pursuits within the area.

The oil area contracts between the federal government of Kazakhstan and the oil corporations stay secret to at the present time — pretty normal observe within the {industry}.

With the oil extraction offers set, Chevron wanted a transportation path to get the oil out of non-coastal Kazakhstan. Whereas some Chevron executives pushed for a option to bypass Russia, Matzke, Chevron’s abroad president, stored his concentrate on an uncompleted pipeline in southern Russia. U.S. officers promoted increasing the CPC pipeline by Russia, too, however additionally they burdened the necessity for a number of oil routes.

The route by Russia, although, was fraught from the earliest discussions about Tengiz. For starters, the CPC disregarded Western corporations. It wasn’t till 1996 that CPC’s construction was radically revised to present Chevron and different personal corporations (a lot of them Western) a mixed 50% stake within the enterprise. The opposite 50% was divided amongst states: Russia, Kazakhstan and Oman. And all pipelines in Russia ran by that nation’s state-owned pipeline monopoly, Transneft. Neither Transneft nor Moscow was about to take a again seat. And the Kremlin was significantly invested in what got here subsequent, as a result of Russia didn’t have a direct accomplice within the mission.

As Nazarbayev later recalled, he needed to go and persuade Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who was in a Kremlin hospital. When Nazarbayev confirmed the ailing president a map of the pipeline, Yeltsin known as up Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and requested whether or not the pipeline was “worthwhile” for Russia. After getting assurance, Yeltsin stated: “Then I’ll signal it.”

Chow, the previous Chevron supervisor, stated that Transneft was necessary for political in addition to financial causes. “In Russia’s patronage system,” he stated, “you should use the management of the pipeline to reward mates and punish enemies.”

Probably the most keen oilman with shut ties to the Kremlin was Vagit Alekperov, CEO of the fledgling Lukoil firm and now Russia’s richest man. A former oil rig employee from Azerbaijan, Alekperov rose to grow to be deputy oil and gasoline minister of the Soviet Union earlier than taking on massive Russian oil fields and establishing Lukoil, now Russia’s second largest oil firm. American journalist Paul Klebnikov wrote in “Godfather of the Kremlin” that Alekperov and Russian Gas and Vitality Minister Yuri Shafranik put the “Baku squeeze” on Chevron and Kazakhstan in 1995: They noticed to it that Chevron acquired solely a 3rd of the pipeline capability it had been promised. Then Lukoil acquired a share of the Tengiz oil mission. The revised offers, accomplished in 1996 and 1997, mirrored the fragile steadiness of energy within the area. Of all of the pipeline homeowners, the Russian authorities would find yourself holding the most important share, 24% on the time. Kazakhstan held 19% and Oman, which overlooks the mouth of the Persian Gulf and shares a border with Saudi Arabia, 7%. The personal shareholders — together with Chevron, Exxon, Amoco, Eni and Shell — held a mixed 50% possession. Chevron owned the most important piece of that slice, 15%. Estimates had been that Russia might get as a lot as $33 billion in direct and oblique income over 35 years. And whereas Russia agreed to donate unused pipeline property, the personal corporations would put up the cash to assemble the pipeline. These developments sprang from Russia’s monumental sense of “nationwide pleasure” and “entitlement” that had been driving forces predating Putin, stated Adrian Dellecker, a political scientist who wrote about CPC for the French Institute for Worldwide Relations in 2008.

“CPC solely occurred as a result of Russia was weak and the West dictated it,” Dellecker informed ICIJ. When Putin got here to energy, “The entire calculation adjustments,” he stated. “It turns into about Russia regaining its former glory. For Putin, the CPC mission will not be about quarterly earnings, and even annual earnings. It’s about gaining management.”

Bending to Moscow

The offers to begin the oil flowing had been underway in 1999, however plans for democracy within the Caspian area would fade due to a profound breakdown of intelligence and failure to foretell Putin’s need to rebuild the outdated Soviet Union.

“This was an ideal dream of the U.S. to make these nations unbiased,” stated former CIA agent Robert Baer, who was assigned to Central Asia and the Caucasus. “It simply wasn’t doable.”

Baer informed ICIJ that U.S. authorities officers’ speak about selling democracy was “public messaging” and “willful blindness” to authorities corruption and dictatorship in Russia and Kazakhstan. “It was all about oil,” Baer stated. “The truth of oil.”

In the long run, the U.S. allotted solely modest assets to the form of coaching, support and establishment constructing mandatory to realize its targets, stated Robert A. Manning, a former senior U.S. State Division official and writer of “The Asian Vitality Issue: Myths and Dilemmas of Vitality, Safety and the Pacific Future.” He known as the U.S. targets of increasing democracy within the Caspian area a “romantic dream.”

However on a crisp day in Could that 12 months there was a lot celebration of the pipeline’s promise. At CPC’s groundbreaking ceremony within the Black Sea village of Yuzhnaya Ozereevka, oil executives, diplomats and politicians on one facet of the street feasted on caviar and sipped champagne. On the opposite facet, a spirited group of as much as 100 activists had wrangled their approach into the ceremony, regardless of orders from the mayor of the port metropolis of Novorossiysk that police cease them.

VIPs together with Chevron’s Richard Matzke and Lukoil’s Vagit Alekperov hailed the beginning of CPC terminal development, which had been within the strategy planning stage for a few years, as a mannequin of worldwide cooperation. Protesters jeered the loudest when U.S. particular adviser Richard Morningstar learn a letter of congratulations from President Invoice Clinton.

They aimed to dam the pipeline from slicing by a shoreline nature reserve, putting an ever larger environmental burden on Novorossiysk. They maintained that Chevron and the opposite CPC homeowners had damaged Russia’s legislation on environmental evaluation and that they had been being denied satisfactory compensation for his or her land.

Yuzhnaya Ozereevka, a settlement of round 1,100 folks 10 miles from the port, featured distinctive forest slopes and pistachio and juniper bushes that residents had sought to guard because the Eighties; now they had been below risk from the billion-dollar pipeline, residents stated in a lawsuit in opposition to CPC in 2000. In addition they pointed to ongoing points with air air pollution from two oil terminals and different enterprises already working within the space. CPC denied the allegations, and a choose present in favor of the corporate.

In the meantime, the West was hopeful about Russia’s subsequent president, Vladimir Putin, who formally took over as performing president on the final day of the twentieth century. Western nations reacted optimistically when the brand new chief vowed to face agency for freedom of speech and the rule of legislation. In Clinton’s congratulatory telephone name to the previous KGB agent, the American president remarked that Yeltsin’s resignation and Putin’s response “are very encouraging for the way forward for Russian democracy.”

Putin’s rise, although, signaled a elementary shift within the Caspian. In a 1999 assembly in Moscow with Alekperov and Matzke to evaluate the pipeline’s progress, Putin voiced a eager curiosity in it, in line with Matzke. After the assembly, Putin burdened the financial and geopolitical significance of CPC to Russia, in line with Petroleum Economist, an internet site that covers the {industry}. Certainly, for some, the early Putin years heralded a second of cooperation between Russia and the U.S. — no less than on points comparable to nuclear nonproliferation and, within the wake of 9/11, counterterrorism. As U.S. Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans stated later on the pipeline’s opening ceremony in Moscow, CPC was the “begin of Russian-American dialogue.”

The view of CPC from the places of work of Transneft, Russia’s state pipeline monopoly, was extra cynical than Putin’s, nonetheless. Transneft, then led by former Lukoil government  Semyon Vainshtok, who went on to have direct entry to Putin, needed complete management of oil transport by Russia. All through the 2000s, Vainshtok wasted few alternatives to remind the general public that CPC’s low income for the Russian state was “humiliating.”

“For transporting oil throughout its territory, the nation has not acquired a cent,” Vainshtok would complain to Neftegaz.ru, an vitality information web site, in 2006.

In the meantime, Novorossiysk residents frightened about what would occur if a pipeline accident spilled oil onto their land. They turned to Mikhail Konstantinidi, a secondary faculty historical past instructor and native civic activist, to battle for them in courtroom. They alleged in lawsuits filed in 1999 and 2000 that CPC had not complied with environmental legal guidelines. “The impolite intrusion of CPC into nature was merely unacceptable,” Konstantinidi, now 66, informed ICIJ. “And as observe and time confirmed, all of our issues had been confirmed.”

Activists in Novorossiysk additionally demanded a referendum on the placement of the pipeline, which native officers stated was of such “nationwide significance” that householders in Yuzhnaya Ozereevka needed to signal over their land. Quickly after, a crew bulldozed the vineyards and the forest.

With Konstantinidi’s assist, campaigners received a restricted victory in September 2000. A Novorossiysk choose ordered a halt to pipeline development. The choose discovered that CPC had didn’t get hold of required environmental approvals and didn’t have permission to start development. However CPC efficiently appealed the ruling. Police detained Konstantinidi two weeks afterward fraud fees, which he stated had been trumped up in retaliation for his pipeline opposition. A choose convicted him, and he served greater than two years in jail.

By the point the instructor turned activist could be freed on attraction in 2004, native resistance to CPC had largely been quashed, he informed ICIJ.

Because the oil enlargement plans at Tengiz moved ahead, CPC wanted to dramatically open up the pipeline’s capability. Officers needed to greater than double its output by enlarging the diameter of the pipes and including 10 pumping stations to extend the rate of the oil circulation. The estimated price was $1.5 billion.

Putin, who had promised his help for CPC, was now below extra scrutiny from the West over his brutal navy marketing campaign in Chechnya, a republic in southern Russia that had declared independence. After a short Chechen success within the First Russo-Chechen Conflict, Russia, below Putin, had launched a second warfare in 1999, crushing the motion with overwhelming navy power. The consequence was deaths, disappearances and displacement of a whole bunch of 1000’s of civilians, leaving Chechnya firmly below Moscow’s management.

To construct on Russia’s said cooperation, Chevron government Ian MacDonald, who was named CPC director in 2002, led a global marketing campaign to advertise the proposed pipeline enlargement.

“It is important to the pursuits of Russia that CPC continues to succeed,” MacDonald stated on the Moscow Worldwide Oil and Fuel Exhibition in June 2002. “CPC unlocks the important thing to the Caspian’s wealth.” However the surge of Western oil cash flowing into Russia and Kazakhstan within the 2000s solely additional bolstered the burgeoning dictatorships in each nations.

As Russia aimed to spice up its financial positive aspects from oil and gasoline exports — in addition to regain its earlier place of energy on this planet — the federal government tightened its grip on CPC. “The stronger Transneft grew to become financially and the extra its management was affiliated with Putin, the stronger it emerged as an entity issuing [the message] that it considers CPC an issue” — a non-government pipeline that was a competitor to Transneft, Vladimir Milov, a Russian opposition chief and former Russian deputy vitality minister, informed ICIJ.

From Russia, the Kazakhs had realized learn how to take “benefit of each minor transaction to extract most worth” from the oil corporations, John Dabbar, a ConocoPhillips government on the time and a former CPC enterprise supervisor, would later inform a U.S. ambassador, in line with a U.S. diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks.

“In Russia, everyone within the Ministry of Vitality wants a income stream and a lever, and typically they’ll pull that lever simply to remind you that they’ll,” the cable quoted Dabbar as saying.

In October 2007 the Russians utilized extra leverage when Putin tapped an outdated KGB colleague, Nikolai Tokarev, to steer Transneft, which had been tasked with managing Russia’s CPC stake. Days later, Chevron bent to stress from Moscow. The corporate modified its perspective and agreed with a proposal to create CPC’s first board of administrators, which might have final say over the pipeline. Russia had 5 of the board’s 22 seats, greater than any shareholder, in line with a report by Worldwide Oil Day by day, a proprietary vitality info firm. The election of a Chevron consultant, Andrew McGrahan, as board chairman was a “compromise” from the angle of Western shareholders.

Whereas Chevron executives performed up progress and success, the fact was that the oil big contemplated withdrawing from the enterprise. Chevron government Man Hollingsworth would later inform U.S. officers that the corporate had largely “written off” CPC enlargement. The Russians “maintain ratcheting up calls for till there may be nothing left,” he stated, in line with WikiLeaks.

Russian affect on CPC elevated in late 2008, after it purchased Oman’s 7% share and boosted its stake within the pipeline to 31%; now Russia might block choices on the board degree.

By late 2010, when CPC shareholders had been lastly set to approve the enlargement finances, the price had ballooned from $1.5 billion to a exceptional $5.4 billion. Chevron cited  “changes in scope” for the escalating price ticket, together with extra energy provide prices in Russia, a major enhance in labor hours and charges, and “uncertainty relating to the readiness” of CPC and the three corporations managing the enlargement.

The confidential Chevron paperwork warned that Transneft was “muscle flexing” and utilizing “bully techniques” to present contracts to Russian corporations. For instance, Transneft held up contract awards, sought to steer offers to unqualified bidders and filibustered for optimum management. Inner Chevron paperwork obtained by ICIJ present the corporate opposed Transneft’s effort to steer contracts to its personal associates as a result of such awards created built-in conflicts of curiosity, since Transneft was not ready to supervise itself. Transneft’s “filibuster” over the contract course of got here to a head on the day the bid packages for pumping stations had been opened: Transneft blocked CPC representatives from coming into its constructing to evaluate the bids, in line with one confidential Chevron presentation. The CPC shareholders permitted the enlargement deal anyway. Regardless of all of the strong-arm techniques, compromises and Russia’s clear ascendence, there was nonetheless a lot cash to be made.

A brand new energy seize

“I went to nice lengths to get my palms on this secret report and at last succeeded,” Russian anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny wrote in his posthumously revealed ebook “Patriot: A Memoir.”

“I used to be appalled,” he wrote, including, “It was an enormous scandal.”

Navalny was writing a couple of leaked inside audit into alleged embezzlement on Transneft’s Japanese Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, a bombshell doc that broke open the dimensions of corruption inside Russian state corporations in late 2010.

Based mostly on the leaked inside audit Navalny obtained, Transneft contractors had repeatedly raised work prices, rigged tenders, carried out pointless work and inflated bills on supplies.

Transneft’s Tokarev dismissed Navalny’s allegations and recommended he was a shill for the CIA.

As Navalny took on state vitality corporations in his campaign in opposition to corruption, he grew to become essentially the most outspoken critic of Putin and his interior circle —  and a global icon for justice. He was jailed on extremism and different fees however denied all of them. Navalny, 47, died in “Polar Wolf,” one in all Russia’s hardest penal colonies, positioned north of the Arctic Circle in Siberia.

A month after Navalny’s audit leak, regardless of no matter misgivings Chevron and the opposite shareholders might need had, they signed off on the CPC enlargement deal.

“The extra Russia grew to become wealthy, the extra assertive the insurance policies of Putin’s authorities had been, the extra endangered the Western investments within the oil and gasoline {industry} grew to become,” stated Milov, the previous Russian vitality official and one-time adviser to Navalny.

The Russian audit on Transneft raised issues about a number of contractors to which  Chevron and its CPC companions had awarded work for the $5.4 billion CPC enlargement. The pipeline improve — to extend capability to 67 million tons of oil a 12 months — started in July 2011 after a decade of negotiations. Pipe with a bigger diameter could be welded onto older pipe. Bigger valves could be put in, and huge storage tanks could be added. There would even be 10 extra pumping stations.

By reviewing courtroom and different public data in addition to leaked paperwork comparable to enlargement progress reviews, ICIJ found that CPC contractors in Russia and Kazakhstan ran up thousands and thousands of {dollars} in fees by contract amendments, carried out poor-quality work comparable to welding defects in pipes and in no less than one case paid a faux subcontractor.

In 10 instances recognized by ICIJ, Russian development corporations signed contracts for the CPC enlargement and accepted advance funds or loans, however they allegedly failed to hold out substantial work or delivered work late. One case, a tax dispute introduced by a serious CPC contractor within the Russian courts in 2015, revealed {that a} $48 million advance fee was made for work that included constructing electrical energy strains to a brand new pumping station in southern Russia that by no means occurred. Most of these funds, courtroom data present, had been initially destined for modular properties for development staff. As an alternative, a number of days later, in line with a Russian choose, $35.6 million ended up at a monetary companies firm arrange by a former colleague of Andrei Bolotov, son-in-law of Nikolai Tokarev, whom Putin had put in because the Transneft president.

The subsequent 12 months, Bolotov took a 50% curiosity within the finance firm — a stake that he later transferred to his spouse on the time, Tokarev’s daughter, Russian company data present. A Russian courtroom famous that the unique development contractor’s actions “had been aimed completely at eradicating funds from circulation” however didn’t discover any wrongdoing on the a part of the monetary companies firm.

Bolotov didn’t reply to a number of requests for remark from ICIJ. In an electronic mail to ICIJ, a former director and shareholder of the monetary companies firm strongly denied that his firm had ever acquired the funds in query.

Lower than a 12 months after the pipeline enlargement received underway, a former Chevron government turned whistleblower accused Chevron and 5 different oil corporations, together with 4 Chevron executives, of approving vastly overpriced contracts. The whistleblower’s lawyer, Stephen M. Kohn, requested the oil corporations to research.

“The data and paperwork offered by our consumer(s) reveal that Chevron, by its Chevron Caspian Pipeline Consortium Firm, has entered right into a mission that it is aware of will funnel large quantities of cash to officers within the Russian authorities (and the colleagues and family thereof) through large overpayments” to corporations with connections to Transneft and the Russian authorities, Kohn wrote in a November 2011 confidential letter to Chevron. He despatched comparable letters to Exxon, Shell, Eni and BG Group PLC (later acquired by Shell).

Exxon’s attorneys stated they discovered no proof to help the criticism. “Your letters to this point recommend the likelihood that you’re engaged in a fishing expedition,” lawyer Theodore V. Wells Jr. wrote.

And BG Group’s attorneys replied that the corporate was reviewing the allegations however that many had been primarily based on supposition and too basic to reply to. Shell PLC, on the time often known as Royal Dutch Shell, acquired BG Group in 2016. Shell declined to reply to questions from ICIJ.

Kohn filed a criticism with the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee the next 12 months, claiming that the oil corporations violated the Overseas Corrupt Practices Act; that 1977 legislation prohibits corporations from promising something of worth to overseas authorities officers to affect choices. Kohn’s criticism alleged pink flags: disguising kickbacks as administration charges, lowering peer evaluate necessities important for correct oversight, and steering contracts to corporations politically favorable to the Russian authorities.

The criticism went nowhere, however in 2022 Kohn filed complaints with the SEC and Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee on behalf of two oil firm whistleblowers with allegations just like the sooner criticism. Kohn’s letters to the oil corporations from the sooner criticism alleged that a technique Transneft funneled cash to authorities officers was by the politically influential firm Velesstroy, which grew into a serious Transneft provider and was allegedly awarded contracts vastly above market price.

Sanctioned by the U.S. in 2023, Velesstroy is owned by businessmen from Croatia named Mihajlo Perenčević and Krešimir Filipović; the U.Okay. sanctioned each males as people (one as early as 2022 and the opposite final 12 months) due to their ties to the vitality sector in Russia. Filipović, who owned practically 85% of Velesstroy in 2020, is a detailed enterprise affiliate of the Russian authorities. The media dubbed him “Putin’s pockets” within the Balkans. In 2017, Putin offered Filipović with a certificates of honor in gratitude for work in “development, growth and operation of recent gasoline and condensate fields.”

The data reviewed by ICIJ, together with financial institution paperwork, inspection reviews and courtroom filings, present how Velesstroy prevented taxes, used unlawful and poorly skilled labor, and violated security guidelines.

Since 2015 no less than 18 Velesstroy staff have died on the job, together with a person who was buried below rubble after an avalanche at a CPC website. In a press launch, CPC administration expressed its “deepest condolences.” Neither Velesstroy nor Mihajlo Perenčević and Krešimir Filipović responded to a number of requests for remark.

Information obtained by Oštro, an ICIJ media accomplice, reveal that by 2020 Filipović and Perenčević managed a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in high-end properties in Croatia and Russia. A Russian financial institution granted a mortgage to assist fund these acquisitions, and an organization linked to Russian oligarchs managed the properties.

In Could of this 12 months, Russian information outlet and ICIJ media accomplice Proekt discovered that Velesstroy was paid $4.3 million in 2021 to refurbish the 4.4-acre Putin Palace. In response to Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Basis, the property contains a helipad, a 27,000-square-foot greenhouse, an ice hockey rink, an indoor pool resulting in an “aqua disco,” an amphitheater present process limitless renovations, a chapel with an imperial-looking throne and a tunnel dug below the property to entry the personal seaside — about 50 miles from CPC’s terminal.

Neither Velesstroy nor its homeowners responded to a number of requests for remark from ICIJ. The Russian President’s press workplace additionally didn’t reply.

As for the continued frustrations with the CPC enlargement, one Western oil government stated in an electronic mail that the best way contracts had been written and managed was “horrible” and that CPC managers who sought to extend oversight had been discredited. A confidential electronic mail from November 2012 quotes a CPC compliance officer calling CPC’s system of managing contracts a “snakepit” below Transneft. “Transneft is taking full benefit,” it stated.

The issues spiraled all the way down to the development itself. An inside CPC report discovered “blatant disregard” for development high quality was “frequent on the enlargement mission, pushed by a must ship outcomes in line with schedule.” However, the report famous, this case “introduce[d] a larger probability of damage and / or failure when tools goes dwell.”

In interviews with ICIJ, 5 whistleblowers stated they’d reported inflated prices on Caspian oil offers and efforts to steer contracts to politically influential corporations. Their complaints alleging violations of the Overseas Corrupt Practices Act have gone nowhere, they stated. ICIJ additionally reviewed paperwork from 4 different whistleblowers or former insiders that alleged comparable price inflation or conflicts of curiosity.

Baer, the previous CIA agent, stated the main oil corporations had been conscious of the corruption dangers and all of the advantageous factors of the Overseas Corrupt Practices Act. “However additionally they understood that you may’t go into Central Asia with out successfully paying bribes by overpaying for companies, contracts and leases.”

Tensions inside the consortium had been ratcheting up. Former CPC worldwide personnel stated they confronted visa issues and different intimidation they suspected  Transneft had initiated. In 2016, CPC employed as its new basic director Nikolay Gorban, a Transneft veteran who had labored at a number of of the corporate’s subsidiaries all through the 2000s. With Gorban on the helm, a brand new energy seize was within the offing. And so was a brand new calamity.

Turbulent waters

In April 2018, CPC Common Director Gorban gave the command to begin the pipeline pump station in Kalmykia, Russia — the ultimate milestone of an enlargement that had lagged 4 years delayed. The subsequent 12 months, the CPC companions launched plans for a $600 million mission to once more increase the pipeline’s capability. As soon as extra Transneft was able to flex its muscle tissues.

Transneft pushed to remove a buoy upkeep contract from a Dutch agency known as Smit Lamnalco, which Chevron most well-liked, and award it to its subsidiary Transneft Service, in line with sources with information of the state of affairs. The three vivid orange buoys, every as tall as a two-story constructing and connected to the seabed by multi-ton anchors, had been extremely advanced items of apparatus floating about three miles from CPC’s marine terminal. Specifically designed to resist extreme winds, these platforms transferred greater than 50 million tons of oil onto a whole bunch of tankers yearly.

In response to paperwork obtained by Proekt, Transneft Service was paying Complicated, a agency that owns Putin’s Palace, practically each month for a non-residential actual property lease. Transneft Service paid the identical agency a small month-to-month payment for buffet companies. The funds for the lease and the buffet companies from 2019 to 2023: greater than $18.9 million.

In 2021, Navalny’s staff revealed particulars on how Transneft subsidiaries paid Complicated about $1 million a month for actual property leases. Navalny dubbed Putin’s Palace “historical past’s greatest bribe,” constructed for the Russian president, Navalny stated, with $1.35 billion offered by members of his interior circle in trade for prime jobs and profitable initiatives.

Sources informed ICIJ’s Dutch accomplice NRC that shareholders argued over a proposal to award Transneft Service a profitable marine service contract, which included buoy upkeep.

Transneft then blocked the election of a brand new CPC board of administrators in early March 2020. Afterward, in line with inside CPC paperwork reviewed by ICIJ, Transneft proposed increasing Gorban’s powers and having staff of Western shareholders working at CPC report back to the overall director. Although a brand new board was elected in Could that 12 months, shareholders selected to not vote on Transneft’s proposals. 5 days after the board’s election, greater than a dozen Western oil firm staff working with CPC received an unwelcome shock: Russia’s Inside Ministry accused CPC of using them in Russia illegally. Involved over doable penalties, the Western staff fled the nation and had been shut out of CPC’s laptop system. Six weeks later, CPC signed a 10-year contract with Transneft Service for marine companies at Novorossiysk.

The pipeline had primarily morphed into “a really spectacular and highly effective political software,” in line with Vladimir Milov, the Russian opposition chief.

In March 2021 Transneft Service took management of marine work at Novorossiysk. The oil spill occurred 5 months later.

A Russian-dominated investigation board blamed the accident on a broken half in one of many buoys that brought on a sudden rupture. The buoys’ producer, Imodco, is a part of SBM Offshore N.V., which has a subsidiary that pleaded responsible in a 2017 scheme to bribe officers in Brazil, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan and Iraq, and agreed to pay a $238 million advantageous. The board didn’t implicate Imodco within the spill.

Within the years earlier than the spill, a sequence of incidents revealed critical security lapses inside the CPC pipeline community, with Russian regulators repeatedly flagging deficiencies. Inspectors famous insufficient procedures for investigating accidents, together with incidents in 2016 and 2017 during which reviews lacked crucial particulars on environmental injury and monetary losses. Additionally, important security infrastructure comparable to fire-extinguishing tools at pumping stations wasn’t maintained, and uncertified staff had been allowed to deal with hazardous duties within the years after the spill occurred. All these points heightened dangers throughout the pipeline.

CPC by no means disclosed precisely how a lot oil was recovered from the ocean, and a Russian courtroom discovered that the pipeline firm offered contradictory info to a Russian environmental company. CPC “has repeatedly modified its place” on how a lot oil spilled, the courtroom stated.

Discovering that the buoy system was “extraordinarily poorly geared up with management units,” the courtroom fined CPC $98.7 million in April 2022.

Simply two weeks earlier, the shareholders had written to Gorban, complaining about quite a few broken pipeline hoses and questioning Transneft Service’s expertise, its tools and its {qualifications} to “guarantee protected and dependable operations.” Neither CPC’s inside investigation nor the courtroom discovered Transneft Service chargeable for the spill. However no matter leverage shareholders as soon as had was lengthy gone.

Weapon of warfare

Russia’s warfare on Ukraine offered all new worries for the Western oil corporations. The U.S. had already sanctioned a number of Russian authorities officers and entities: in 2014 after Russia’s occupation of Crimea, and in 2018 for cyber and U.S. election interference. With the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine got here new navy motion within the Black Sea: cruise missiles launching from Russian submarines; Russian warships concentrating on Ukrainian cities; Ukraine’s sinking of a Russian fleet flagship; and Ukrainian drones and missiles placing devastating blows in opposition to Putin’s fleet primarily based in Crimea and Novorossiysk. And all of this was in proximity to the CPC pipeline.

The beginning of the warfare, then, led to frequent shutoffs of the pipeline faucet.

In the course of the warfare, ICIJ’s investigation discovered, CPC has confronted no less than 20 disruptions of exercise or suspensions of oil shipments, most due to upkeep and restore of apparatus, unhealthy climate situations stopping oil from being loaded onto tankers, and inspections of the seabed for decommissioned explosives courting to the Second World Conflict.

ICIJ additionally found that Putin’s administration could have manipulated a declare of apparatus injury by a storm to make the West and Kazakhstan fear about oil provides. The obvious manipulation of data started two weeks after the U.S. moved, in early March 2022, to chop off Russia’s oil earnings and different assets by sanctions. CPC launched an announcement saying it had suspended operation for 2 of its three oil buoys due to the storm injury and estimated that repairs might “take appreciable time.” Initially, in line with Arseny Pogosyan, who was a press secretary on the time for Russia’s deputy vitality minister, the Russian authorities was going to launch a easy assertion concerning the injury, providing an analogous evaluation.

However in reviewing the preliminary message, Pogosyan stated, Russian officers recommended the repairs would take longer than they really would or ought to have, with Deputy Vitality Minister Pavel Sorokin claiming, in what had now morphed right into a video message, that the repairs might take six weeks to 2 months. “And naturally, given the size of those repairs, we’re speaking a couple of potential lack of capability as much as 80% of oil loading,” Sorokin stated. Pogosyan, the person behind the digital camera, informed ICIJ that the Russian authorities sought to decorate the March pipeline shutdown to point out the West that Russia might inflict ache by oil availability regardless of the sanctions.

Pogosyan stated he needed to redo the video with Sorokin — who continually went again to Putin’s administration for session — 12 occasions.

“They tried to make the incident extra important to world media,” stated Pogosyan, who left Russia in September 2022. “The principle motive we did it so many occasions was the presidential administration’s intention to make the message tougher, extra important, to scare the West.”

In January of this 12 months, although, CPC Common Director Gorban informed Kazakh journalists, “There have by no means been any stoppages of our pipeline system, in any 12 months, due to the political statements of anybody. All of the stoppages had been linked to technical causes, or to the climate. We’re by no means linked to politics.”

Radio Free Europe reported in 2022 that the pipeline carries about 80% of Kazakhstan’s oil exports, a lot of it to Western markets. In 2023, the CPC pipeline carried 63.5 million tons of oil to worldwide markets. Eighty-eight % of that quantity got here from the Kazakh oil fields and the remaining from Russia. Based mostly on adjustments to increase the pipeline’s capability, it might probably carry as much as 83 million tons of oil yearly. However  when shipments are halted, oil costs rise and Europeans face potential gas shortages.

“What occurred in 2022, with the disruption to loading within the Black Sea, created shock waves by the {industry},” Malcolm Forbes-Cable, vp of vitality consulting agency Wooden Mackenzie, stated at a convention this 12 months.

“When half of this capability was taken offline in March 2022, the oil market reacted by growing the value by $5 [per barrel],” Forbes-Cable stated. “That simply reveals you what a crucial, world piece of infrastructure [CPC] is and the way necessary it’s to the worldwide financial system.”

Based mostly on ICIJ’s reporting, nonetheless, the pipeline shutdowns have had restricted impression on customers worldwide, regardless of occasional, short-term worth hikes. This discovering goes in opposition to what Western governments have provided as to why CPC must be exempt  from sanctions: to spare European vitality customers.

In her assertion, Chevron’s Sally Jones underscored how CPC is a crucial export route for Kazakh crude to worldwide markets. “There aren’t any different viable export choices,” she stated.

To maintain CPC off the listing of corporations banned from doing enterprise with Russia, the Western oil corporations and Kazakhstan spent thousands and thousands lobbying the U.S. Division of the Treasury, the Division of Vitality, the State Division, members of Congress and the European Fee. They argued that shutting off the oil would possibly hurt customers in Europe and have geopolitical penalties.

And that argument was fixed: 5 months into the warfare in Ukraine, the Kazakhstan state oil firm KazMunayGas retained the American legislation and lobbying agency Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. For a contract that’s now price about $3.8 million, the agency organized no less than 101 conferences with U.S. officers to foyer for CPC, along with dealing with different associated issues, in line with disclosure varieties filed by the lobbying agency below the Overseas Brokers Registration Act (FARA).

In response to the FARA reviews, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck organized no less than eight conferences with Geoff Pyatt, U.S. assistant secretary of state and particular envoy and coordinator for worldwide vitality affairs on the State Division. In remarks posted on the State Division web site final 12 months, Pyatt stated that CPC needed to be stored off the sanctions listing as a result of it’s the “principal exit level for Kazakh crude to world markets.” It’s also “an necessary supply of provide, particularly for a few key European allies,” he stated.

The State Division “labored very carefully” with the Treasury Division to maintain the pipeline in operation, Pyatt acknowledged. “Chevron and ExxonMobil have invested tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}” in Kazakhstan, he stated, they usually “are all watching very rigorously the vulnerability that arises from our collective reliance on CPC.”

Pyatt didn’t reply to a number of requests from ICIJ looking for remark, nor did Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

In a written assertion to ICIJ, a State Division official emphasised inherent dangers of doing enterprise with Russia, citing issues comparable to seizing personal property, manipulating vitality assets for political ends, and looking for to punish corporations that adhere to U.S. or accomplice sanctions. “Russia has weaponized its vitality commerce relationships to exert political affect, proving itself an unreliable long-term accomplice.”

The State Division official additionally reiterated long-standing help for range of pipeline export routes to bolster vitality safety and cut back dependency on a single accomplice.

In complete, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck reported 17 conferences with State Division representatives. The agency additionally organized conferences for its purchasers, KazMunayGas and the Kazakh Embassy, with 9 senators and 48 U.S. representatives.

Neither KazMunayGas nor the federal government of Kazakhstan responded to requests for remark.

In Brussels, 10 weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, the cupboard of European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen acquired an electronic mail from an Exxon vp expressing “pressing critical concern” relating to the impression of simply proposed sanctions. However by then the EU was already tightening sanctions on Russia.

“The present textual content would stop the exports of Kazakhstan crude by the CPC pipeline,” Nikolaas Baeckelmans, a vp for EU affairs at Exxon, wrote to Kurt Vandenberghe, a member of von der Leyen’s cupboard, in Could 2022.

“This (CPC) crude ought to proceed to circulation and never be topic to/clearly exempted from sanctions,” Baeckelmans wrote. “Please be aware that the US sanctions do comprise an express exemption for this pipeline and I imagine it all the time has been the intention to strive and make sure the transatlantic alignment.”

Seventeen minutes later, Vandenberghe wrote again, reassuring the lobbyist that his message was “properly acquired.”

In a written assertion to ICIJ, an EU Fee spokesperson declined to offer particulars about how the fee made the choice to not sanction the CPC pipeline. “All choices on sanctions within the EU are taken unanimously by the Member States within the Council,” the spokesperson wrote. The Council of the EU is one in all its decision-making our bodies.

For a thousand days, it has been essential to radically cut back Russia’s means to fund its warfare by oil gross sales. Oil is the lifeblood of Putin’s regime. — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, addressing European Parliament on the 1,000-day anniversary of Russia’s invasion

Past the arguments in opposition to sanctions, the reality is that sanctions would additionally price Chevron, Exxon and the opposite corporations misplaced gross sales and a delay of their enlargement plans.

One nation that some would assume to be in favor of sanctions takes a special perspective. On November 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy known as for “robust sanctions” in his tackle to the European Parliament’s extraordinary plenary session  marking 1,000 days since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“For a thousand days, it has been essential to radically cut back Russia’s means to fund its warfare by oil gross sales,” he stated. “Oil is the lifeblood of Putin’s regime.”

Russian oil enters the CPC pipeline primarily from Lukoil’s offshore fields within the Russian sector of the Caspian Sea, in addition to by rail transport from smaller fields in southern Russia. In July 2022, advocacy group International Witness revealed {that a} Russian oil firm with ties to sanctioned oligarch Roman Abramovich was exporting oil by the CPC system.

Nonetheless, Agia Zagrebelska, coverage director of the Financial Safety Council of Ukraine, defined to ICIJ in an interview why Ukraine had not known as for sanctions on CPC or the CPC pipeline.

“The work of the CPC is mirrored each on the European degree and in [other] nations,” she stated. “Due to this fact, at the moment we’re pressured to look not solely at what People and Europeans assume, but in addition what Central Asia thinks.”

U.S. officers are nonetheless pushing for a pipeline route that bypasses Russia whereas attempting to maneuver Kazakhstan towards the West politically. “It’s in our DNA,” stated Manning, the previous State Division official. “We’re all the time attempting to advertise democracy in locations which can be very completely different from us. It hasn’t turned out very properly.”

Russia’s warfare in Ukraine is in its third 12 months, with 30,000 civilian deaths;  3.7 million folks internally displaced; and 6.5 million having fled the nation. Amidst all that carnage and loss, the pipeline, by a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in taxes that CPC pays to Russian authorities, helps to spice up arms manufacturing and pay state officers’ salaries and pensions.

In the meantime, Putin continues to maintain Western governments on edge. Russia’s nuclear threats are ever-present, and there are worries of an invasion of Kazakhstan below the pretext of reuniting “Soviet” lands. All of this performs out amid sanctions on Russian oil and pipelines being selectively exempted, serving to to maintain the Russian financial system afloat.

For Putin, the tip of the Soviet Union was, as he informed Russians in his 2005 state of the nation tackle, “the best geopolitical disaster of the century” — and the final word present of weak point. From the start, Putin supposed to show power nonetheless and wherever he might. With the CPC pipeline, his willpower to serve solely Russia whereas undermining the West wasn’t simply an early take a look at of his autocratic model of management. It was a couple of new show of energy. And a warning to the world of what he would possibly do with such energy.

Contributors: Carola Houtekamer, Karlijn Kuijpers (NRC); Stefan Melichar (Profil); Carina Huppertz, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, Hannes Munzinger (Der Spiegel/Commonplace/Paper Path Media); Anuška Delić (Oštro); Roman Badanin, Mikhail Rubin (Proekt); Denise Ajiri, Naubet Bisenov, Kathleen Cahill, Jelena Cosic, Marcos Garcia Rey, Whitney Joiner, Karrie Kehoe, Marcia Myers, Delphine Reuter, Matei Rosca, David Rowell, Richard H.P. Sia, Dean Starkman, Thomas Rowley, Gerard Ryle, Nicole Sadek, Fergus Shiel, Annys Shin, Tom Stites, Peter Stone, Angie Wu (ICIJ)