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ACCRA, ABUJA - This story puts the spotlight on a clandestine network of gunsmiths and arms traffickers operating in West Africa in contravention of local laws. It shows how these gunsmiths and traffickers exploit the porous borders across the West Africa and Sahel region to traffic illicit small arms and light weapons, which continues to fuel conflicts across the region.

The oil industry continues to try and expand in Kenya, but there is an urgent need for stricter enforcement and adherence to the rules designed to keep the public and environment safe from the extraction industry’s impacts. The journalists continue to investigate the impact on Kenya from the discovery of oil reserves in the country, as well as the role of key companies and individuals who have profited. 

LILONGWE - Taxation treaties that Malawi signed with other countries over the last fifty years are costing the country hundreds of millions of dollars, since they have opened up opportunities for multinational corporations to reduce their tax liability through tax avoidance.

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 largest publicly traded tobacco companies are using to minimise their tax bill. 

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.

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.

The three legs of this investigation reveal:

1. Kenya's enormous betting addiction;
2. 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;
3. 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.

ANTWERP - Karl van den Broeck, who succeeded Georges Timmerman as editor-in-chief of Apache in 2014, tells in a six-part series how the top man of De Persgroep (now DPG Media) committed a sophisticated stealth murder on Flanders' most important independent progressive newspaper De Morgen. 

BRUSSELS - A lot goes wrong with our tax collection. There are so many loopholes that the tax authorities collect a lot less than what the state is entitled to. This is one of the reasons why the government has to borrow and why we have a large national debt.

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.