Lionel Faull

Lionel Faull is Investigations Editor for Lighthouse Reports.

Lionel specialises in tracing cross-border money flows behind corruption and mass exploitation. He has more than a decade’s experience as an investigative journalist, previously working for Finance Uncovered in the UK, and the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism in South Africa.

Lionel has worked on several award-winning team investigations, including the GuptaLeaks in 2017, the Panama Papers in 2016, and lavish state spending on then-President Jacob Zuma’s private home in 2013. He has also freelanced for the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian in the UK.

Basic information

Name

Lionel Faull

Expertise

money flows, grand corruption

Country

United Kingdom

City

London

@LionelFaull

Website

Lighthouse Reports

Supported projects

Money Trail newspaper supplement

Corruption
Finance
Tax evasion

AMSTERDAM, BRUSSELS - In February 2021 a Dutch and a Belgian newspaper included a 16 page supplement about the Money Trail project.

The booklet featured four full Money Trail stories, plus a 'Stories behind the Stories' section, which revealed how the journalists went about to do their research and get their stories published.

A Betting Nation

Corruption
Finance
Sport
Tax evasion

NAIROBI - The three legs of this investigation reveal:

Kenya's enormous betting addiction;
At the same time the Kenyan government removed a tax for betting companies, a cousin of Kenya's president accumulated a financial stake in betting giant SportPesa;
SportPesa has been sucking profits out of its lucrative Kenyan business by paying millions of pounds to a software company it owns in the UK.

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Mentor for

Ghost debts

Finance

EU - Hundreds of thousands of evictions and people enchained to debt, while financial actors in tax havens as well as EU countries profit from a system that originally was created to stabilize banks. This is the result of an official EU policy on so called non-performing loans, that was adopted as a response to the global financial crisis.

Hard Labour: How a lack of regulation puts Kenyan surrogates at risk

Exploitation
Healthcare
Trafficking

NAIROBI - This story uncovers a multitude of worrying allegations about the unregulated surrogacy industry in Kenya.

How Frank Timis uses UK-registered companies to exploit Africa's resources

Corruption
Economy
Energy
Industry

FREETOWN - Following BBC's Panorama investigation into secret oil and gas deal corruption between one of City's most controversial businessmen, Frank Timis, and the Senegalese president's brother, Aliou Sall, a team of journalists from Britain and Sierra Leone funded by our Money Trail grant programme can reveal further insight into just how questionable this deal was.