Antonio Baquero: “You can earn much more money with corruption than with drug trafficking”

BarcelonaRussian sabotage, various scams, and money laundering in Dubai. These are some of the topics in the portfolio of Antonio Baquero, an investigative journalist who works for the OCCRP, a global media outlet that works around organized crime. With Baquero, winner of the latest Prix Europa award as the best journalist on the continent, we talk about corruption, media, and his previous experience as a war correspondent.

Do all wars end up being the same war?

— No, every war is different. Or at least I experienced it differently. Now, there is one thing that repeats itself: the suffering of the civilian population, always.

The toughest one?

— The hardest one is Iraq, for me. I lived it from the inside, I lost friends like José Couso. Death haunted us all very closely. That day, I had breakfast with him and I went down those stairs. I am talking to you here now because I didn't stay ten minutes longer with him. And it is also mine, because once I left it, I didn't want to go back. I closed that chapter too soon and I was left with this debt.

Debt to whom?

— With myself, with them, with Iraq. I left because I considered that I had already tempted fate too many times, there.

Is this the closest you have ever been to death?

— In Afghanistan, we passed through the same place where they killed Julio Fuentes a day before. I really like wars. War journalism is the easiest thing there is: you look for stories and everyone there has one. Now, the emotional toll is brutal.

Living with death must be hard.

— The dead are impressive, but the living are more impressive. I remember one time in Iraq, I was with a man and his child. A missile fell very close by and the image of the kid clinging to his father's leg, emotionally breaking down, has stayed etched in my mind.

Are you carrying a trauma?

— I am not traumatized, but I decided that I didn't want to risk it anymore. That I am not Rambo. It was a dream from when I was a student, I fulfilled it, and I turned the page.

Reading the book that you published back then, you speak of the fascination with war. Of the fact that, when there is a bombing, people go out to watch it... and so do journalists.

— It was very fun because they had given us a war training course: that if missiles fall you have to throw yourself to the ground, that if you have to open your mouth so your eardrums don't burst... The first day, we applied everything, but the second day we were already running to see all those fireworks.

Are today's wars explained better or worse than those of twenty years ago?

— The people who are alone on the ground explain them very well and in a very raw way. We have seen it with Gaza, which is why there is this mobilization: because it has been seen what war really is. Or in Ukraine.

We talk a lot about hybrid wars now. How should they be explained?

— With neutrality. Russia is becoming increasingly aggressive and it will happen to us as in Blade Runner, that we will see things that we cannot even imagine in Europe. It is in a very complicated situation and this will lead it to do very drastic things because Putin cannot afford to lose. Because it is not Russia's war, it is Putin's war.

You investigated Russian interference in the Procés.

— Yes, and it was not taken as seriously as it should have been.

Man, there were those who said there were 10,000 Russian soldiers on the way.

— This is nonsense, of course. But someone was here, met with Puigdemont, and I, as a Catalan, have the right to know if he met with a lackey or someone from the Kremlin. But that is water under the bridge now. What we must be clear about is that things we don't think are acts of sabotage, actually are.

Let's return to José Couso: is there any possibility that the United States will finally assume some responsibility?

— If it was impossible when the United States had somewhat normal governments, imagine now. This will go absolutely unpunished.

Was it an accidental or premeditated death?

— I believe it was premeditated. Look, I remember one day we saw an American tank approaching. We took out a white handkerchief and were able to talk to the guys inside. And when I saw the map they had of the next target... Damn, they even had the bathrooms detailed and everything. Everything was down to the millimeter: it is impossible that they did not know that that huge building was the Palestine Hotel. They opened fire because the press bothered them.

After building a career at El Periódico, you now work at the OCCRP. What is it, exactly?

— It is a media outlet owned by a foundation that covers the whole world and is dedicated primarily to investigating organized crime. And, furthermore, we promote investigative journalism: we create an ecosystem so that media outlets that have fewer resources than we do can receive technical or financial help for their investigations. The foundation is in Washington, but the media outlet's central newsroom is in Amsterdam. We are a large group of over a hundred journalists scattered all over the world.

Who finances it?

— Governments, above all. The United States gave a lot of money, but Trump stopped giving aid, so now the income comes mainly from governments in northern Europe and from private donors in the United States.

Is Spain loosening up?

— No, we do not have public or private funds. There is no patronage program here.

What motivated you to sign with them?

— I was at El Periódico, as head of Breaking News. And I was fine... but I was bored. It is just that the moment they make you a boss, you stop hitting the streets. I moved because I needed to feel like a journalist again.

Does investigating organized crime pose a personal risk?

— Anything can happen, of course. We have a very powerful security team and they provide us with training, but in Western Europe it is very difficult for organized crime to kill a journalist because they prefer to fly under the radar rather than over it. Here our greatest threat is legal because we often poke our finger in the eye of people who can spend fortunes on lawyers who charge 1,000 euros an hour.

A journalist takes quite a bit longer to earn this money.

— Of course, these lawyers are interested in dragging out the matter as much as they can to bill for it, even if they end up losing the lawsuit. It is the lawsuit itself that wears you down and takes up a lot of your time, financial resources, and emotional resources.

Are there groups that are bombproof against journalistic investigations?

— In the end, they all fall: there is a lot of leaking, a lot of ethical hacking. There are many people who are inside companies or institutions, they see things they do not agree with and decide to record them and pass them on.

Does corruption ever stop?

— A few weeks ago I saw that Laura Borràs was a guest on Gemma Nierga's talk show. Let's see, this is a lady who has been convicted... If we let that slide, we let everything slide. We are condescending toward elite corruption. In reality, society is not corrupt: try bribing a Mossos d'Esquadra officer or a Guàrdia Urbana agent and you will get into serious trouble. On the other hand, at the top, it is different.

Often cases are uncovered more by the justice system than by the press.

— The thing is, in Catalonia... Look, when you called me and said “Put me in the interview queue” I found it very funny. What queue? Only you have called me! And it must not be a coincidence that ARA is the only media outlet in Catalonia that has a small department that conducts investigations. There are snipers, yes, and some very good ones. But they work alone, without a department, a structure.

And are these structures not there due to an excessive proximity of the media to power or due to the lack of resources of a press suffering from chronic pneumonia?

— Europe is full of investigative-only media. And they live off that. Why don't we do it in Catalonia? We have the talent, but perhaps we are not interested in investigation. In the end, newspapers have to decide to publish news.

Does the Madrid press publish more news?

— But that is not investigation either. And it is quite a bit more aggressive. Now it will seem like I am buttering you up, but from the beginning, ARA decided to make a serious newspaper. With an ideology that is not mine, but it is rigorous. And it is still there. Because serious journalism, in the end, is worth it.

Nowadays, the production and consumption of content are so overwhelmed that it is difficult to make a major investigation profitable. In five minutes, other media outlets have picked it up, whether they cite you or not. And in one day, that investigation is forgotten.

— That is why we have a team dedicated to impact. When we release a powerful story, they get in touch with those who make decisions and try to amplify that subject so that things happen. And that eventually leads to laws being made. We became journalists so that the world would be a better place. And I know some will say: “That is naive”. Damn it, is changing things naive? The far-right wants to change everything and no one calls them naive, do they? We seek impact. We make things happen.

Can AI be a good tool for research?

— You have to be very careful. I receive a list of 2,000 Spaniards that I have to check because they have companies in Luxembourg or Dubai. Six years ago, I went one by one, on Google. Now I can put it into the AI. I try it and, bam, Juan Carlos de Borbón, Francisco Granados, from the Community of Madrid, Rajoy...

Alert!

— (Laughs) Of course, it had made it up, because AI wants to offer you what you desire. Another day I was looking into a scam topic and the AI made up a case: with the full names of two detained Bulgarians, the name of the operation... I call my source at Europol and he tells me: this doesn't exist, Antonio.

In any case, with the cases not invented by AI but proven, should penalties for the corrupt be toughened?

— The thing is, the topic of prisons strikes me as mind-blowing: prison as punishment is a medieval solution. Only those who are a danger to society should be there.

How should the corrupt person be punished, then?

— He must be anathematized. What do we gain by having a guy in a hole and throwing away the key? I don't see the point. What we have to do is explain that the corrupt person is stealing from us all, especially from the most vulnerable. I don't know what the sentence should be, but putting someone like Rato in prison... What do I gain from it, if he comes out like a hero later?

Then you must be in favor of publishing the list of tax evaders to the Treasury.

— That's true. People are not aware that you can earn much more money with corruption than with drug trafficking. Large public subcontracts move an amount of money you cannot imagine. How did the great Russian oligarchs make their money? With mining, infrastructure... That is, with public procurement.

Are there untouchables in Spain regarding corruption issues?

— Wow, good question... In the judicial sphere, no. There are untouchables in general. But they are so because those who fight against corruption have few resources. Proof of this is that the current Head of State is being very careful with this, because he knows it is the weak point. I would say there are untouchables regarding public opinion: if those who steal are 'mine', then it's fine by me.

A classic scheme: the party rotted by corruption, but a clean leader who claims they didn't realize it. Is it credible?

— It surprises me, of course. What is a party's corruption for? Basically, to win elections. In fact, if a politician steals for himself it seems less serious to me than if he steals for the party, since then he is perverting the democratic system. The problem is that we have a very non-transparent country. I cannot know, as a journalist or as a citizen, who is the ultimate owner of a Spanish company. And I can know it in Luxembourg. In Luxembourg!

Transparency is, indeed, a major deficit.

— And transparency rhymes with democracy. There was a European resolution that obliged all countries to make the beneficial owner of companies public. Spain never made this register public. And then came a ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union that is quite shitty, because it placed privacy above the right to know. It was filed by a guy who said: “If people know I have companies, they can come after me”. I don't know of any case of a citizen in the EU who has been attacked for having companies!

And then?

— I became obsessed with it and we conducted an investigation to find out who the hell this guy was. And it turns out he was listed as a director of more than a hundred companies. In other words, a textbook front man. Many of his clients were oligarchs, so Russia has scored a real goal against us. The European Union has decided that there should be no transparency, and that is very dangerous.

Give me a Tax ID and I will move the world...

— A company is more dangerous than a gun: it can do a lot of harm. The big problem for mafias is the cash, which has proven to be difficult to introduce into the system. How do they do it? With companies. If you create one, you can have a checking account, make transfers, buy and sell between your own companies... You are not actually buying anything, of course, but rather faking the movement. Doesn't the public have a right to know which companies these are?

Media outlets are also businesses. Should they disclose who their owners are?

— Yes. They do it quite rarely. But, above all, they must be transparent with their processes, explain more about how they worked on some big exclusives. Without revealing sources, obviously. The reader appreciates it.