"Journalist Pelin Ünker sentenced to jail in Turkey over Paradise Papers investigation", 09 Jan 2019

A Turkish journalist has been sentenced to more than a year in jail for her work on the Paradise Papers investigation into offshore tax havens, because it revealed details of the business activities of the country’s former prime minister and his sons. Pelin Ünker, a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) was found guilty in an Istanbul court of “defamation and insult” for writing about companies in Malta owned by Binali Yıldırım and his sons. Yıldırım was prime minister from 2016 to 2018... and is now the speaker of the country’s national assembly... Ünker told the ICIJ she intended to appeal, pointing out that the Yildirim family had admitted that articles about their Maltese businesses were accurate....Turkey has the world’s worst record for jailing journalists, with 68 in prison at the end of last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. All...are facing charges of crimes against the state... The Paradise Papers revelations stemmed from a mass leak of documentation on the offshore financial industry published by a consortium of 90 media outlets... The ICIJ’s director...condemned Ünker’s jail sentence of 13 months, as the latest in a long series of attacks on free speech in Turkey.