WE PARTNER ON IN-DEPTH REPORTING AT SOURCE
WE PARTNER ON IN-DEPTH REPORTING AT SOURCE
Our primary purpose is the joint reporting and publication of investigative journalism with a focus on European topics to understand how power structures affect European communities.
Systemic flaws of the payment industry
The #DirtyPayments series reveals a major European financial scandal. It shows how, during the last decade, the French giant payments company Worldline and its German subsidiary Payone have systematically processed dubious and fraudulent online transactions worth billions of Euros, facilitating large scale scamming, controversial porn sites, prostitution networks, illegal casinos and even possible money laundering operations. This happened right under…
» moreBehind Big Oil’s toxic flames
Western European oil majors, including BP, ENI, TotalEnergies and Shell, rank among the 10 largest polluters in Africa and the Middle East when it comes to gas flaring. This investigation reveals for the first time the individual responsibilities of big oil companies behind this disruptive practice. Using satellite and geo-data as well as open source research, we linked thousands of flaring…
» moreBanks are investing billions in some of the world's biggest carbon emitters using environmentally friendly labels.
More than four thousands funds in Europe invest 87 billions euros in the 200 most polluting companies. Such investments are being marketed as green under a faulty EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). EU-regulated “green funds” have been marketing investments in the world’s largest carbon or greenhouse gas emitting companies. Their “green” operations are in fields with the most carbon-intensive economic…
» moreMEP Greed - cash from Qatargate to pay for an apartment in Brussels.
The lucrative side opportunities for those working in the EU Parliament and the involvement of the facilitators holding EU official positions are illustrated by the case around Eva Kaili, based on a trove of documents and phone message exchanges. EIC leaves no bag-of-cash unturned and reveals how a hidden campaign on behalf of Qatar has been led from the heart…
» moreHow European companies supplied dictators cyber-surveillance tools for more than a decade.
During the last decade the Western world has encouraged and applauded the digital tools that empower democracy activism in countries under authoritarian regimes. But at the same time European companies have supplied such authoritarian regimes the digital back doors to turn any digital device into powerful spying tools against dissenters. Predator Files reveals that European companies have been funding and…
» moreHow a Swiss company spied across Europe on behalf of the UAE state.
Abu Dhabi Secrets reveals how the Swiss private intelligence company Alp Services has been contracted by the UAE government to spy on citizens of 18 countries in Europe and beyond. Alp Services has sent to the UAE intelligence services the names of more than 1000 individuals and 400 organizations in 18 European countries, labelling them as part of the Muslim…
» moreA deep dive into how Wagner mercenaries are taking over the diamonds of Central African Republic.
After we exposed Bois Rouge as a vehicle of the Wagner group grabbing the exotic timber of CAR in exchange of mercenaries, we looked closer at a company established at exactly the same time: Diamville. The research has unraveled a unique construct that overlaps Wagner military, Prigozhin commercial operations, diamond mining, looting and exporting - all in the shadows of…
» moreAn investigation that is showing how the barter of conflict timber in exchange for Wagner mercenaries works in the Central African Republic.
Read about how the Central African Republic gave away its forest to the private military group Wagner. Because of the inefficiency of the timber controls in Europe, Wagner conflict timber cannot be stopped from reaching European clients, despite existing sanctions. Timber for Mercenaries was conducted in collaboration with All Eyes on Wagner, a project by the French NGO OpenFacto. Read…
» moreHow to rob a country using a bank
#CongoHoldUp, the largest leak from the African continent to date, reveals how the commercial bank BGFIBank has been used to plunder the Democratic Republic of Congo’s public funds and natural resources, largely for the enrichment of former President Joseph Kabila’s inner circle. The same bank group, with a troubled history of sheltering corrupt deals involving African autocrats and European companies,…
» moreAn investigation exposing for the first time how a high-level working group of EU member states has failed to tackle harmful tax practices in Europe.
Tax havens do not exist on sunny islands only, but also in the European Union. Some EU countries lure corporations with minimum-taxes and make other countries miss out on billions of Euros in tax revenues every year. For almost a quarter of a century, the EU has had a set of rules designed to prevent just that - and a…
» moreHow to kill the planet and get away with it. An investigation into shipping emissions.
Black Trail is an agenda-setting investigation into the environmental impacts of the shipping industry — a sector that is all but untouchable as it receives eye-watering subsidies and stashes its profits in tax havens, all the while polluting with impunity. This collaboration initiated by EIC brings together journalists from newsrooms and TV networks across Europe, including Expresso and SIC TV…
» moreCompany operated on Jersey offering forgery and money laundering services for decades with impunity.
A huge new leak of tax haven documents has revealed an especially dirty part of the tax haven world, including forgery of documents, dummy accounts and the use of false client names. The leak consists of hundreds of thousands of pages of records of a Jersey offshore company called La Hougue (later Pantrust in Panama) that offered techniques for money…
» moreA collective look behind intransparent company records.
In an unprecedented project, EIC network opened up its investigative work to a journalism school to jointly review and research material provided by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS). Journalists, students and technologists worked together on a dataset containing almost one million documents from the Bahamas company registry. DDoS acted as an intermediary for the source that leaked…
» moreEurope is flooded with massive amounts of cocaine, at record high purity.
Large captures and high purity of cocaine on the streets of Europe show that traditional production and supply chains of this drug have been disrupted. A team of journalists, who are part of the network European Investigative Collaborations, has been investigated this phenomenon for the last several months
» moreThe story of the most heavily industrialised area of Turkey.
For six months, The Black Sea and the European Investigative Collaborations network have investigated the public health crisis in Kocaeli, the most heavily industrialised region in Turkey. We have revealed of a pattern of chemical dumping and polluting that has led to a widespread health crisis in the region. One small town, Dilovası, home to around 45,000 residents, bears the…
» moreFootball Leaks investigative project continues.
This is a cross-border investigation into how the secret deals of club officials, leading associations, agents, investors and players have corrupted the most popular sport in the world. Continues revelations are based on research into more then 70 million documents totalling 3.4 terabytes of data. The data extends to the year 2018. Recent work was undertaken by the network European…
» moreHow the EU pays Turkey to keep out refugees.
An investigation by Danwatch, Politiken, and The Black Sea with the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network looks into the programmes paid for by the EU to Turkey to keep refugees out of Europe. Contracts show that the EU bought 83 million Euro worth of military vehicles, surveillance equipment and patrol boats for the Turkish military to seal and police its…
» moreThe Malta Files show how the Mediterranean state works as a pirate base for tax avoidance inside the EU. Although profiting from the advantages of EU membership, Malta also welcomes large companies and wealthy private clients who try to dodge taxes in their home countries.
Over the last three months, EIC.network has dug into hundreds of thousands of documents that show how Malta operates a tax system where companies pay the lowest tax on profits in the EU.
This damages the budgets of other EU-countries and reveals a weakness in the European Union, which allows member states sovereign rights over their taxation.
In 2016, European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) started publishing in-depth stories focused on events critical to Europe. The network currently includes journalists, information-designers and technologists working together across more than a dozen European newsrooms on specific large-scale projects. Due to our many meetings and conversations, small groups of journalists in our network discuss ideas for cross-border stories and publish articles that…
» moreThis investigation analyzes the criminal policy instituted by the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno Ocampo.
Court Secrets is a project by EIC.network which will publish a series of articles based on over 40,000 documents, financial statements, diplomatic cables and correspondence, cross-checked with public sources.
» moreThe largest leak in the history of sports reveals murky financial transactions in the world of European professional football and exposes the tax tricks employed by some of the Continent's biggest stars.
The data includes 18.6 million documents, including original contracts with secret subsidiary agreements, emails, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and photos. The data set extends into the year 2016. EIC partners will publish their findings in the coming weeks, allowing for an unprecedented look into the gloomy depths of the modern football industry.
» moreEast Europe’s shadow gun market is fuelling terrorism in the west, as criminal gangs use legal loopholes and open borders to traffic weapons.
An international team of journalists who are part of the newly established network European Investigative Collaborations has spent three months detailing how Brussels’ failure to impose comprehensive directives has facilitated the sale of deadly weapons.
» moreIf you want to get in touch please communicate with Stefan Candea at [email protected] (pgp: 0x8234F8D4A624D9F4).