Archives: Investigations

14.01.2025

Computer says no fly

Opaque surveillance tools being sold to governments with the promise they can ‘export borders’ to everywhere we board trains, planes and ships

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08.12.2024

Drownings and Deterrence in the Rio Grande

More women and children are drowning trying to reach the US as Texas and Mexico militarize the border. Record requests reveal the soaring death toll in the Rio Grande amid official undercounts.

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27.11.2024

Sweden’s Suspicion Machine

Behind a veil of secrecy, the social security agency deploys discriminatory algorithms searching for fraud epidemic it has invented

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22.10.2024

Border911

Ahead of the US election, the architect of Trump’s family separation policy – slated to return to office if Trump is re-elected – is using border disinformation to lay the groundwork for challenging the election results.

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11.10.2024

Turkey’s EU-funded deportation machine

The EU has funnelled hundreds of millions of euros into a shadowy deportation system operating just outside its borders in Turkey. Syrian and Afghan refugees have been detained, abused and even killed as a result

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US taxpayers funded a covert campaign to downplay the risks of pesticides and discredit environmentalists in Africa, Europe, and North America
27.09.2024

Poison PR

US taxpayers funded a covert campaign to downplay the risks of pesticides and discredit environmentalists in Africa, Europe, and North America.

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09.09.2024

The Kutum massacre

Previously unpublished execution videos link leaders of the Sudanese RSF militia to ethnic massacres in the Western region of Darfur.

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01.07.2024

The QAnon Recipe

Analysis of 100mn conspiracy posts on social media reveals the key ingredients of virality by tracing the mainstream emergence of a climate denial theory

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05.06.2024

False Promise of Biometrics

Three-country investigation shows digital IDs in Africa failing to deliver promised democratic and development boost, while making fortunes for tech vendors

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31.05.2024

Afghan War Profiteers

Before the fall of Kabul, billions of dollars were sunk into a failing Western intervention. New records reveal the Afghan contractors who profited and the millions they stashed in Dubai property.

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ORTE, ITALY - FEBRUARY 3: Farmers with their tractors gather near the A1 highway to protest against EU agriculture policies, on February 3, 2024 in Orte, Italy. Farmers and agricultural workers are holding protests across Europe and various part of Italy to protest against EU agriculture policies.
23.05.2024

Farmers Protest, Who Gains?

Angry farmers seized the political agenda across Europe but how many of their actual demands reached the negotiating table? We profile the power brokers who turned protests to their advantage

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21.05.2024

Desert Dumps

Europe supports, finances and is directly involved in clandestine operations in North African countries to dump tens of thousands of Black people in the desert or remote areas each year to prevent them from coming to the EU.

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18.04.2024

Brain waste

Analysis of data previously unavailable to journalists reveals exclusion of skilled migrants from the jobs Europe most needs to fill to prevent economic decline

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23.03.2024

Sink the Boats

The UK government is paying France to ‘Stop the Boats’. Now first-time footage reveals French police have violently intercepted dinghies sailing for Britain, risking the lives of people on board

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19.03.2024

Smoke and Lies

Visual investigation reconstructs the unseen events which saw 40 people suffocate to death in a migrant detention centre fire in Ciudad Juárez, disproving official account

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27.02.2024

Automating Distrust

Digital profiling of Dutch low income, minority neighbourhoods spirals, series of local investigations reveals

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19.02.2024

Great British Betrayal

The UK has turned away hundreds of Afghan commandos paid and trained by the British military. Some had complained about or say they witnessed war crimes by the same UK forces who were given veto power over their applications, with insiders warning of a conflict of interest.

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12.02.2024

2,200 Frontex emails to Libya

Frontex has shared locations of migrant boats with Libya’s coast guard more than 2,000 times in three years – despite watching them whip, beat and shoot at passengers

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13.12.2023

The Rubble King

President Bashar al-Assad is demolishing opposition neighbourhoods in order to create a shiny new Syria – one in which dissent never existed – and reward his cronies with the spoils

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11.12.2023

Frontex and the pirate ship

The EU’s border agency Frontex and the Maltese government are systematically sharing coordinates of refugee boats trying to escape Libya with a vessel operated by a militia linked to Russia, human trafficking, war crimes and smuggling.

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04.12.2023

France’s Digital Inquisition

Taking apart the secretive fraud detection algorithm that scores half of France’s population but pursues the most vulnerable.

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'No name' graves in Bijeljina cemetery, Bosnia
01.12.2023

Europe’s Nameless Dead

As more people try to reach Western Europe through the Balkans, taking increasingly dangerous routes to evade border police, many are dying without a trace

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01.11.2023

Abandoned Afghan Commandos

Left Behind: Dozens of Afghans who served in special forces units funded and trained by the UK have been murdered or tortured by the Taliban

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23.10.2023

Animal welfare wrecked

How an increasingly assertive meat industry helped derail a historic democratic demand to improve animal welfare standards in the EU

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Waste collectors sift through trash in Ward 11. Rachel Moon. July 2023
10.10.2023

The West’s Next Plastics Dump

As Southeast Asia bans plastic waste imports, rich countries are offloading their plastic waste in even more vulnerable places – where citizens are too afraid to say no.

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23.09.2023

Left for Dead

Left Behind: Afghans who worked for Dutch-funded NGOs were told they’d be evacuated to safety, but a shift in policy left them to face the wrath of the Taliban – with consequences that have proven deadly

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15.09.2023

Syrian Women on the Run

Denmark’s threats to send refugees back to Syria has disproportionately affected women – including some who fled abusive partners

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The German government is rejecting its Afghan staff’s pleas for evacuation, despite its own development agency warning they face Taliban retaliation
28.07.2023

Germany’s Afghan Betrayal

Left Behind: The German government is rejecting its Afghan staff’s pleas for evacuation, despite its own development agency warning they face Taliban retaliation

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The lead smugglers behind the Pylos shipwreck are closely linked to General Khalifa Haftar, the Libyan warlord who EU leaders are partnering with to curb migration
20.07.2023

Smuggler, Warlord, EU ally

The lead smugglers behind the Pylos shipwreck are closely linked to General Khalifa Haftar, the Libyan warlord who EU leaders are partnering with to curb migration

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Why Europe and Ukraine are still struggling to ramp up ammunition production
10.07.2023

At war without ammo

Why Europe and Ukraine are still struggling to ramp up ammunition production

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29.06.2023

Drowning in Lies

Greece tries to cover up its own role in the Pylos shipwreck by tampering with evidence

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Europe’s Potemkin Lobby
29.06.2023

Europe’s Potemkin Lobby

Powerful European farming lobby Copa-Cogeca is losing legitimacy even as it stymies the EU’s green agenda and hoovers up public funds

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02.06.2023

The Crotone Cover Up

Italy lied about its role in a shipwreck that killed 94 people – including 35 children – and the EU border agency Frontex helped cover it up

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10.05.2023

Ghost in the network

How a Swiss tech expert runs a global phone surveillance system

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09.05.2023

The Instagarchs

How the war in Ukraine and international sanctions upended the gilded world of Russia’s oligarch class – as seen through the prism of their social media

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25.04.2023

Toxic Rain

Hazardous and potential cancer-causing pesticides are being sprayed over farms supplying Nestlé and Coca-Cola

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24.04.2023

Ethnic Profiling

Whistleblower reveals Netherlands’ use of secret and potentially illegal algorithm to score visa applicants

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17.04.2023

Spain’s AI Doctor

Unpublished documents and inside sources give rare look into secretive AI system used to decide who is shirking work

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12.04.2023

France’s forgotten Afghan spies

Left Behind: A French-led intelligence cell in Afghanistan was kept secret for years – and now France has left its agents behind

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06.03.2023

Suspicion Machines

Unprecedented experiment on welfare surveillance algorithm reveals discrimination

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25.01.2023

War profiteers

How an Estonian arms broker pocketed millions at Ukraine’s expense

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18.01.2023

Detained below deck

Asylum seekers held in secret cells on ferries between Greece and Italy

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08.12.2022

Europe’s Black Sites

Refugees arbitrarily detained, tortured at secret facilities in EU

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