UPDATED 22/06/2021 - 08:10 GMT - This site has seen emails that show that Michael Baer, also known as Michael Philipp Bär or Mike Baer, was seeking capital investment for his MBaer Merchant Bank AG in the U.S. from Francisco D'Agostino in early October 2017. So we went to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) database (EDGAR) to see whether there were any records of Mr Baer, or any of the recent companies he appears associated with.

As per Reuters: "The United States, Britain and other large, rich nations reached a landmark deal on Saturday to squeeze more money out of multinational companies such as Amazon and Google and reduce their incentive to shift profits to low-tax offshore havens.

In April 2006, we wrote: "On April 11 2006, Mexican authorities seized 5.5 tonnes of high purity cocaine in Ciudad del Carmen's airport. On August 3 2005, Dutch tax authorities and the sea harbour police seized 4.6 tonnes of cocaine in Rotterdam, the largest ever haul in the Netherlands. On October 13 2005, Spanish police seized 3.5 tons of cocaine in a fishing boat bound for Spain. On September 16 2005, 691 kilograms of cocaine were seized in the Tuscan port of Livorno, Italy.

Every journalist / media outlet out there is partial to its causes. When it comes to corruption, and specifically to graft in resource rich countries, there is little that is not known, that is doesn't form part of an ever evolving narrative particular to the field. Every person remotely acquainted with large scale corruption would have heard (by now) about Russia, Nigeria, DRC, Odebrecht in Brazil, China, Panama Papers, FIFA, Switzerland, London, Daniel Ortega, the Kirchners, HSBC actively helping Mexican narcos launder money, David Cameron and Greensill, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump...