Supported projects

KATHMANDU - As countries in Eastern Europe increasingly face the problem of lack of workforce, they are turning to a new source of workers – Asian countries, especially Nepal. But often those workers are abused on the way during their journey to Europe and exploited in the destination countries ...

AMSTERDAM - While the Covid recovery is increasing pressure on public finances and raising the prospect of tax increases, this new research from The Investigative Desk with support from the University of Bath shows, for the first time on this scale, which tax avoidance methods the world’s four ...

ISTANBUL - This investigation blows the whistle on the phenomenon of brokers who, with the complicity of Turkish civil servants, help to move forward the citizenship applications of Syrians in return for bribes. On the other hand, more than five thousand Syrians’ files remained pending until they ...

An Indonesian state-owned aircraft manufacturer allegedly paid more than 10 million euro in kickbacks to dozens of high-ranked politicians and army officials. The company disguised the payments as a ‘marketing fee’, using fictitious partners.

NAIROBI - European media regularly report on human rights violations by multinational companies 'from here'. Various Flemish media reported that a Brussels construction company would engage in forced labour in Qatar in preparation for the World Cup. Swedish journalists Tobias Åkerblom and Moa ...

SOMONIYON - Tajikistan has abundant water resources and has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in improving access to and supply of water. However, millions of Tajik residents still struggle to access running water, let alone clean water.

A Dutch fishing giant is involved in a corruption affair and tax evasion scheme concerning fishing quotas in Namibia. The money trail goes via Poland and Iceland.

MINSK / VILNIUS - A cross-border investigation by Lithuanian and Belarusian journalists follows the trail of Alexander Zaytsev and Aliaksei Aleksin, two Belarusian businessmen considered to be close to the Alexander Lukashenko's regime.

BELGRADE - Writer and historian Irene van der Linde and documentary photographer Nicole Segers travel in the footsteps of the British writer Rebecca West through former Yugoslavia and Albania. With West's magnum opus Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942) in their hands, they go in search of the meaning ...

AUSTIN - Louise Van Assche is a documentary filmmaker who lives and works in Austin, Texas. She was born and raised in Belgium and has Congolese roots. A year ago she moved to Austin, the capital of Texas. There she ended up in the middle of the Black Lives Matter protests. It touched her personally ...

DUBLIN - Facebook and Google let advertisers target the audience they want to reach, that much is known. Less known is that both platforms perform another round of targeting, irrespective of the advertiser's wishes. 

BRAKEN - The Belgian town of Braken, on the Dutch border, is home to 1.2 million chickens. They divide the town: residents are tired of the smell, the fine dust and the heavy traffic in their village. To objectify the discussion, the local government ordered an air quality study.

BRUSSELS - A pregnancy test that could lead to a miscarriage or a child with a birth defect. Abroad, the drug Duogynon is causing controversy to this day. This autumn, a British victims' organisation is suing the manufacturer, pharmaceutical giant Schering (now Bayer).

SCHIEDAM - A radically different view of cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, that is what The Cholesterol Myth is all about. Part of it is that cholesterol is no longer the big bogeyman, but, according to experts, can be seen as a positive, body-specific, even healing substance. On closer ...

ACCRA, PARIS - A French official got into wood exportation without paying any taxes on this commercial activity. Despite his presence in the Panama Papers he was awarded the French Order of Merit.

DAMASCUS - French humanitarian NGO SOS Chrétiens d’Orient (SOSCO) claims to support persecuted Christians in Syria and the wider Middle East without interfering in conflicts or local politics. But in reality, the seven-year-old NGO - which was founded by far-right, conservative, Catholic activists - ...

HARARE - Gold is Zimbabwe's chief export product. However, partly because of the country's monetary policy, an estimate of 50% of artisanal and small-scale mined gold in Zimbabwe is lost to smuggling, causing bloody turf wars that have claimed hundreds of lives.

BEIRUT - On 17 October 2019, a revolution broke out in Lebanon that is still raging among the people. The - young, secular - population is trying to break free, while the divided sectarian power apparatus is digging deeper. The ongoing Lebanese popular protests resulted in the largest national ...

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 ...

NAIROBI - Facebook, the world’s biggest social network, has been used to attract millions of Kenyans to fake companies who are after their personal information. Kenyan journalist Odanga Madung exposed the series of frauds the US tech giant was unable to stop. 

KINSHASA - The research by Jeroen Janssen, awarded graphic novelist, and journalist Hilde Baele on Mzee Jérôme Sebasoni, who became Che Guevara's guide as a young Inyenzi rebel, took no less than 12 years.

MERKSPLAS - March 2020. Corona shuts down Belgium. Everyone has to stay inside. Door closed, one hour a day outside. A story that sounds familiar to the residents of Merksplas prison.

DEIR AL-HAJARI - The first bomb hit the village of Deir al-Hajar in north-western Yemen at around 3 am on 8 October 2016. The airstrike killed a family of six: a pregnant mother, her husband and their four children. Survivors watched their homes being destroyed by the air raid.

BRUSSELS - As a child, journalist Brecht Castel lost his father after suicide. Twenty years later he is left with questions. Questions that not only concern himself, because in Flanders an average of three people get out of life every day.

BAGHDAD - This series of articles investigates the production and dissemination of fake news to sow instability in Iraq and the Middle East. It reveals how Iraqi (terrorist) groups are paying Facebook millions to churn out fake news, and gives an inside look in Hezbollah's fake news training camps.

YEREVAN - In 2018, Armenian citizens overthrew an authoritarian regime in a mass movement. Now, they are taking on an international mining company. Over the past few years, activists and locals have blockaded Lydian International’s flagship $400 million Amulsar gold mining project due to its ...

BRUSSELS - U:nite works with a team of emerging actors and word artists to bring news to 16-24-year-old video consumers using new online formats.

ANTWERP - FactRank is a free tool that automatically filters out statements from Dutch-language texts worthy of fact-checking.

GHENT - The Polar Project is a cross-media magazine on climate change. It aims to promote interdisciplinary exchange through journalism, art, and performance, and to explore the boundaries of journalistic storytelling.

GHENT - In this project, Chase provided grants and coaching to young journalists so they could create digital stories about social change in urban communities.