Tobacco Roads

Europeans who donate old clothes assume they’ll be go to the needy — but they could just as easily end up in an illegal dump in a foreign country.

Businessman Koka Kokolashvili keeps a low profile in Georgia — but he does have family connections to the country’s political elite. Now, as the EU is looking to Georgia’s hydroelectric industry as an untapped energy resource, companies he owns have landed government contracts to develop a new wave of hydropower plants on Georgia’s rivers.

Armenia’s former deputy prime minister, Tigran Avinyan, was swept to power by the country’s “Velvet Revolution” in 2018. His family company went on to indirectly benefit from a state agricultural program he oversaw.