Supported projects

ANTWERP/ROTTERDAM - Heavily contaminated plastic waste from the Netherlands and the rest of Europe can be illegally exported via the port of Antwerp, unnoticed by inspectors, to countries where it ends up being dumped. Antwerp is an important hub for the international trade in plastic waste. But ...

VILNIUS - As an investigative team of journalists watched the pandemic unfold in early 2020, their plans for reporting in 15 European countries were scuttled. But they began to see patterns in covid-denialism that mimicked what they had seen with anti-vaxxers. They decided to expand their project to ...

CAÏRO - Can you love a dictatorship? Well, no, but the Belgian journalist Ruth Vandewalle does not want to leave Egypt after more than ten years. Ten years after Tahrir, she goes looking for answers among her Egyptian friends. Their solution: create your own reality.

SOFIA - Excessive water cuts for its consumers, questionable management of tendering procedures, constant increases in water prices in the face of significant leaks in its outdated infrastructure. These features of a global water giant, repeatedly highlighted by the press, are no longer a secret in ...

DODOMA - Almost $176m that belonged to the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) at Barclays Bank disappeared mysteriously and landed on a Tanzanian national. The funds for putting up 1,000 school structures to accommodate 45,000 poor students in Africa, ended up in a group of people in Tanzania ...

KYIV - The unregulated surrogacy sphere in Ukraine, controls at the external border of the European Union as well as the closed borders and restrictions on movement introduced in 2020 due to COVID-19, lead to questionable decisions like moving Ukrainian women across the border to Poland to continue ...

AL HOCEIMA - During the summer holidays, Europeans with a Moroccan migration background flock to Al Hoceima. For two months, the tourist resort in the Rif region is flourishing and there is work again. But it's only a little solace for the Rifine population that has to deal with a corrupt government ...

BAMAKO - After Afghanistan and Iraq, burn pits also seem to have appeared in around western military camps in Mali. In 2014, an extensive air study was conducted by Professor Yacouba Toloba, head of the pulmonology department at the Point G hospital in Bamako. The concentrations of fine dust around ...

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 ...

FREETOWN - Fish exported from Sierra Leone to Italy is exposed to allegedly illegal trawling that the Italian government seems unwilling to scrutinize.

GHENT - 'The Farm', is literally an old Belgian farmhouse outside of Ghent. From the seventies onward it was the operational base for young promising international riders. Michael Tvardovskiy lived at The Farm for eight years, after deserting the Ukranian army. When he got deported from Belgium ...

ANTWERP - The port of Antwerp is considered to be the most important port for coca imports in Europe. Every year, tons of cocaine come here hidden on board container ships. The value of the smuggled cocaine is estimated to have a street value of tens of billions of kronor. 

BEVEREN -‘Jailbirds’ intents to speak about the impact of the Covid-crisis and the lockdown, not only on a practical or economic level but to highlight mental processes and how it influences our psychological state. From a microcosmos: incarcerated life versus universal and collective uncertainty ...

MINA DO BAROSSO - Lithium is the raw material we need en masse for batteries, including electric cars. Under Portuguese soil there is a lot of that 'white gold'.

BRUSSELS - How did we come to pay gold for a drug whose effectiveness has not been proven? This is the story of Remdesivir, a drug developed by the American company Gilead Sciences with large public funds to combat Ebola, and in July approved by the European Medicines Agency with "conditional ...

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.

BRUSSELS - Europe's Natura 2000 protected areas are groaning under nitrogen emissions from livestock farming. Meanwhile, farmers near nature reserves fear for their future. Due to conflicting policy choices, agriculture and nature conversation have become diametrically opposed. The call for a long ...

BRUSSELS - This story tells how European border and migration policy is making life difficult for people on the Balkan route. Officially, the route is closed, but this research shows how it is still active.

ROME - Investigation into cash flows and funds destined for the Islamic State's revival plan.

KYIV - After the fall of a self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria dozens of thousands of foreign fighters fighting in the ranks of Islamic State or ISIS disappeared. They used smugglers, contacts and networks to leave the country. Many of them were looking for safe havens where they can take a break ...

STEKENE - It is not allowed to live in a recreation area. Yet people still live in a chalet or a caravan, or sometimes in a brick weekend residence. Sometimes these are people who find themselves in precarious financial circumstances. Pensioners, people coming out of a divorce, people who are ill ...

AMSTERDAM - Illegally logged teak from South Sudan goes to India where it is made into furniture before it could end up in stores in Europe. Indian timber traders illegally source the timber from East Africa and export it as an 'Indian' product after processing.

CAPE TOWN - As dam levels dropped rapidly at the end of 2017 and Cape Town faced the looming threat of becoming the first major city where taps would run dry, households were forced to pull out all the stops to save water. But Coca Cola and other big industrial users were given a free pass.

ACCRA, ABUJA – This investigation exposes a hidden network of Chinese control and ownership of many industrial fishing vessels operating in Ghanaian and Nigerian waters in contravention of local laws.

DAVOS / ROSTOCK / GOTHENBURG - Climate change is making European summers ever drier and hotter, and not just in the south: During the extremely dry summer of 2018, the drought was mostly limited to the part of Europe north of the Alps. In many places, the summers of 2019 and 2020 were again ...

BRUSSELS - The investigation of Annika Joeres and Susanne Götze illuminates a neglected subject of climate policy. They show what a powerful player the Lobby for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has become for the European Climate Policy.

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.