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This week: Call it digital déjà vu. AI scammers and tech bros are as strong as ever, spyware’s spreading, and the spin doctors are working overtime. Europe’s border business is booming, cattle are vanishing from the books, and Washington’s secret cyber unit is blurring the line between justice and espionage. Same storylines – different week. Guess some habits die hard in Europe.
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💸🤖 Investment scammers slip through cracks in EU Big Tech lawInvestigate Europe | 16.10.2025
Across Europe, thousands are being tricked by AI-generated investment scams on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok – complete with deepfakes of politicians like Germany’s Defence Minister Boris Pistorius and Ireland’s presidential candidate Heather Humphreys. #ScamEurope, an investigation project in collaboration with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, reveals that despite the EU’s landmark Digital Services Act, tech giants are still failing to remove fraudulent ads quickly, leaving watchdogs and “trusted flaggers” struggling to keep up. Investigate Europe reveals how organised crime groups are cashing in, call centres across the Balkans are fuelling the fraud, and victims are losing billions – all while Big Tech insists it’s playing by the rules.
📱🕵️♂️The surveillance empire that tracked world leaders, a vatican enemy, and maybe youLighthouse & Partners | 14.10.2025
A cross-border probe has exposed First Wap, a Jakarta-based surveillance firm run by European executives that built a vast phone-tracking network spanning more than 160 countries. Marketed as crime-fighting tech, its Altamides system was secretly used to locate journalists, activists, and political figures – from the Vatican to Silicon Valley – and sold to authoritarian regimes and private companies for millions. Leaked data revealed more than a million tracking operations and showed how First Wap’s tools were abused far beyond government oversight, blurring the line between security and stalking.
⚠️🍺This Is the warning Big Alcohol wants to keep off your bottlesFollow the Money | 13.10.25
What appears on cigarette packs was about to appear on beer bottles too: a cancer warning. But Heineken and other alcohol giants moved fast to stop it. An investigation by Follow the Money and The Investigative Desk revealed how the industry launched a global lobbying offensive to block Ireland’s plan for red health labels – funding scientists to cast doubt on evidence and pressuring governments in Dublin, Brussels and Washington. The campaign delayed the law and has raised fears that the EU’s first cancer warning labels could be shelved altogether, despite the WHO supporting their essentiality. And Heineken’s hangover isn’t over yet – new documents have since emerged. (Hint hint: subscribe to Bureau Brussels for next week’s scoop).
We also liked🏚️💶 The booming border industry in Europe
An investigation by Spit and Altreconomia uncovered how governments across Europe award multimillion migration contracts to companies with criminal records and little oversight. From Italy’s €133-million Albania detention deal to Sweden’s “asylum millionaires” and the U.K.’s Serco centres, granted despite past fraud of the British government, the investigation exposes profit before accountability in Europe’s increasingly privatised migration system.
🐄💀 Hide and seek: cattle tracking violations risk major disease outbreak
A year-long investigation by TBIJ found U.K. farms broke livestock tracking rules thousands of times, failing to log the movements or deaths of nearly 165,000 animals. Experts warn these gaps leave Europe vulnerable to disease outbreaks, from foot-and-mouth to antibiotic-resistant superbugs. A £200-million biosecurity centre is planned for 2026 – but scientists say action is needed now.
🕵️♂️💻 Inside Group 78: the secret US cyber task force
Reporting by Le Monde and Die Zeit exposed Group 78, a secret U.S. unit introduced by the FBI at EU cybercrime meetings in The Hague last year. The task force allegedly planned covert operations to pressure Russian ransomware gang Black Basta, prompting unease among European officials who warned of blurred lines between judicial cooperation and intelligence work. The FBI declined to comment, and the group’s scope remains unknown.