2019-02-26
JAKARTA - We're in Jakarta in Indonesia for Money Trail's five-day financial investigative journalism and data security training. 32 journalists and activists from 18 Asian countries are in attendance. This is the second round of training organised by the Money Trail Project.
Conducting and delivering journalistic illicit finance investigations is often long, difficult and complex. It can even be dangerous. It can take courage to even start researching these stories.
Money Trail delivers practical skills and tools for journalists and activists all over the world who want to investigate tax abuse, money laundering and corruption.
Finance Journalism Training
For three days this week, journalists and civil society members from all over Asia are being shown how to investigate corporate accounts, offshore activity and corporate corruption. Finance Uncovered is showing attendees where to find documents, how to analyse them and other practical tools to help uncover financial secrecy.
A combination of hands-on training and guidance from senior practitioners will give them the basis to investigate financial corruption as well as offering the opportunity to network with other journalists and activists.
Digital Security Training
A safe working environment is essential for investigative journalists. Journalists work with sensitive information so training on keeping them, their data and their sources secure is paramount. During the last section of the training, Free Press Unlimited will focus on advanced digital security techniques, including encryption, secure communication and methods to stay “under the radar” during investigations.
About Money Trail
Money Trail is a collaborative project between highly regarded journalism and training organizations – Finance Uncovered, Free Press Unlimited, Journalismfund.eu – and Oxfam Novib.
In Money Trail, Finance Uncovered and Free Press Unlimited, offer training courses focused on how to investigate tax abuse, money laundering and corruption plus digital safety. After this training round, there will be four left. There remaining training will take place in Abuja, London and Jakarta again. Watch this space for future training.
In Money Trail, Journalismfund.eu offers working grants for teams of African, Asian and European journalists to investigate cross-border illicit financial flows, tax abuse and corruption in Africa, Asia and Europe.
Grants Deadline
The attending journalists can then apply for a Money Trail Grant to investigate cross-border illicit financial flows, tax abuse and corruption. In order to be eligible, the journalists will be required to collaborate with journalists from other countries in the region.
African and European journalists are also encouraged to apply. European journalists will be required to collaborate with African or Asian journalists while African journalists will have to collaborate with colleagues from other African countries. Intercontinental collaboration for African and Asian teams is strongly encouraged.
Each team must consist of at least two journalists from at least two different countries.
The next Money Trail Grant deadline is on the 25th of March. Apply here.
