SARAJEVO — One year ago, I got the call that all editors fear. On the line was Pavla Holcova, an editor at the Czech Center for Investigative Reporting. I could tell she was deeply shaken.
“Jano is dead,” she said. “They killed Jano.”
Ján Kuciak — Jano to his friends — was a young investigative reporter at Aktuality.sk, a Slovak outlet that partnered with Holcova for a series of stories. He was working on a story about the ‘Ndrangheta, a notorious Calabrian-based mafia group that had crossed into Slovakia. Ján’s reporting showed the group had deep ties to Slovakian politics and was involved in EU farm subsidy fraud. I had never met him but I knew Holcova was very fond of him.
I remember telling Holcova that this would not stand, that we would act decisively. But I don’t think I was convinced of it myself. I felt utterly powerless.
Reporters are not supposed to be killed for their work. It’s a breakdown of our values and social norms. The feeling of reporting in an environment where this can happen is a little like painting a house when it is on fire.
A vigil is held for the victims | EPA-EFE/David Duducz
Ján worked the most dangerous beat, in the nexus of organized crime and politics. It’s a growing area. In some places, it’s all that’s left. 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.
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.
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.
These deaths are painful beyond words.
This profoundly undemocratic money moved to the West, 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.
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. 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 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.
Demonstrators at a protest in Bratislava in May 2018 | Vladimir Simicek/AFP via Getty Images
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 the one I received a year ago, but I know it will come again.
Drew Sullivan is editor and co-founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.