Welcome back to the podcast, Brib, Swindle, North Steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi, and we're talking today about a grim phenomenon, the murder of journalists, and especially journalists who are investigating corruption. We covered the murder in Malta by Carbom of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

When Daphne was murdered in 2017, the world was shocked that it could happen to a journalist

living and working in the European Union.

But then in 2018, less than six months later, in Slovakia, Jan Kuziak, an investigative

reporter and his fiancé Martina Kusnirova, were murdered in their home.

My guest today is Matt Sarnacki, a senior producer with the OCCRP and the director of an excellent

documentary on the life and murder of Jan and Martina and the criminal investigation surrounding

their case, the killing of a journalist. Matt, thank you for joining me.

Thanks for having me. Your excellent documentary moves at a very brisk pace to cover primarily

the investigation into the murders, although you do a great job of really bringing us into the

lives of Jan and Martina. Could you start by providing some context,

particularly with respect to the investigations that Jan was working on when he was killed?

Because that's, of course, the thread for the whole story.

Jan Kutziak was investigating a lot of different individuals in Slovakia,

but particularly Slovak politicians and Slovak oligarchs. And he was looking into their

financial crime, specifically VAT frauds. He was doing this in the years leading up to his murder,

but actually at the time of his murder, he had an unpublished story that he was working on.

And the story actually connected the then Slovak prime minister to the Italian organized crime group, the Ndrangeta.

And he actually hadn't published it at the time of his murders.

The morning that it was announced that Jan Kutziak and Martinekocherova had been murdered,

I think within the journalistic community and within the professional community,

people thought it might

...