Supported projects

The Malta-based Shift News in collaboration with the largest Montenegrin daily DAN launched an investigation into the Sino-Maltese wind farm project in Montenegro underhandedly backed by Montenegro's ruling clique and Azerbaijani businesses present both in Malta and Montenegro.

This investigation examines a $22 million “consultancy fee” paid by one of the world’s largest palm oil conglomerates, the Korindo Group, in connection with the acquisition of a shell company that held permits to establish an oil palm plantation in Indonesia’s easternmost province of Papua.

Over the past decades, a handful of Israelis have overseen and trained elite units of the Cameroonian army. Their paid services brought them millions of dollars, which they invested around the world. Meanwhile, the army unit they've trained, the BIR, has committed extensive human rights violations.

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.

LAGOS - This series of investigations exposes the consequences of yearlong corruption in the construction and oil sectors on Nigerian life conditions, and the dodgy relationship between oil businessmen and corrupt politicians in the country.

AMSTERDAM, NAIROBI - Dutch flower growers in Kenya avoid corporate taxation, using transfer pricing and offshore constructions. The loss of tax revenue due to these practices is substantial and has large consequences for Kenyan society.

MALTA - The model for the privatisation of Malta’s public hospitals negotiated by now disgraced Minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Keith Schembri, with the approval of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, was exported to Balkan States with weak democratic structures that enable large-scale corruption.

ABIDJAN - In this story, investigative journalists Daan Bauwens and Nicholas Ibekwe focus on Highway 10, the transatlantic route that for centuries brought millions of captured African slaves to South-America via the tenth parallel.

BUCHAREST - The need of Italian mafia networks to carry out vast money-laundering operations took them to Romania and Bulgaria. They set up companies that not only succeeded in flying under the radar but also won government contracts. 

CAPE TOWN - Although cyberspace is not the main platform for the illegal wildlife trade, it provides an anonymous and versatile marketplace in which to buy and sell. It is safe to say that the internet plays a role at some point in an increasing number of wildlife trafficking incidents.