Newsletter Dec 25, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #103 We begin this week with a stark case of transnational financial repression. Russian dissident and financial director of Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), Anna Chekhovich, reports that her US bank accounts were temporarily shut down after the Kremlin labeled her an “extremist.”
Newsletter Dec 18, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #102 Last week, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, an international recognition of her decades-long efforts for democracy, human dignity, and free elections in Venezuela.
Newsletter Dec 11, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #101 In India, financial officials confirmed that the digital rupee, the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), is now live and complete with spending controls.
Newsletter Nov 27, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #100 One hundred weeks ago, we set out to document how authoritarian regimes manipulate money and employ financial repression to restrict civil liberties, silence dissent, and undermine human rights – and how individuals are resisting with open-source software.
Newsletter Nov 27, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #99 Today, we reflect on the financial repression so many face around the world, and how brave and creative minds are pushing back.
Newsletter Nov 13, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #97 The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has raised alarm over an escalating crisis for press freedom in Pakistan, where local journalists and media workers are being financially targeted.
Newsletter Jul 10, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #80 In the wake of the latest conflict with Israel, Iran has orchestrated a domestic crackdown, detaining more than 1,000 people, killing dozens, and targeting minority communities and activists.
Newsletter Jul 3, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #79 This week, we begin in Kenya, where police and pro-government goons attacked peaceful demonstrators and violently suppressed June 25 marches, which marked the anniversary of last year’s anti-tax bill protests and honored the memory of at least 60 people killed then.
Newsletter Jun 12, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #76 This week, we begin in Kenya, where police detained Rose Njeri, a software developer and mother of two, for building a website that enables Kenyans to flag causes and email parliament concerning an unpopular tax bill that threatens to raise the cost of living in an already inflation-sticky economy.
Newsletter May 22, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #75 Today, we begin in China, where the central bank injected $138 billion into the economy and expanded the money supply by 12.5% year-over-year.
Newsletter May 15, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #74 We bring news from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group is imposing immense taxes on the local economy, merchants, and aid groups to fund its insurgency as it seeks to govern seized regions of the Eastern Congo.
Newsletter May 8, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #73 This week, we bring reports from Bangladesh, where the interim government instructed the central bank to halt the printing of old banknotes featuring Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding president of Bangladesh.
Newsletter May 1, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #72 This week, we bring pressing news from Belarus, where the regime’s central bank is preparing to launch its central bank digital currency in close collaboration with Russia by the end of 2026.
Newsletter Apr 24, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #71 In Georgia, mere weeks after freezing the bank accounts of five NGOs supporting pro-democracy movements, the ruling Georgian Dream party passed a new law banning foreign organizations from providing grants to local groups without regime approval.
Newsletter Apr 17, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #70 This week’s headlines expose the lengths authoritarian regimes go to perpetuate the financial power that preserves their rule, often going so far as to bend, break, and rewrite the rules of money itself.
Newsletter Apr 10, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #69 Today, HRF takes part in the launch of the Bitcoin Humanitarian Alliance in London, where a dozen human rights and aid groups will convene with policymakers, media, finance professionals, and technologists at the Frontline Club to explain how they are using Bitcoin in their work in the field.
Newsletter Apr 2, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom #68 Georgian officials froze the bank accounts of five nonprofit organizations that provide financial and legal support to detained protesters.
Newsletter Mar 27, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #67 Turkey’s currency plunged to a record low after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rivals.
Newsletter Mar 13, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #65 In Iran, lawmakers impeached the economy minister, Abdolnaser Hemmati, following the Iranian rial’s rapid collapse, with the currency plunging to 1 million per dollar.
Newsletter Feb 27, 2025 HRF’s Weekly Financial Freedom Report #63 In Nigeria, financial officials are revising digital asset regulations to impose taxes on digital asset transactions on regulated exchanges.
