2025-12-05 16:00:54
The South China Morning Post reconstructed how one of Hong Kong’s deadliest fires swept through a housing complex, with illustrations and 3D modeling showing how construction materials and wind fueled the blaze. In this edition of our Data Journalism Top 10, covering stories from November 18 to December 2, we also highlight the Financial Times’ exposé on human rights abuses experienced by mainly longline tuna fishing workers, Der Tagesspiegel’s analysis of heckles, shouts, and other gestures in Berlin’s parliament, The Washington Post’s interactive comparing Elon Musk’s pay package to the earnings of US workers, and how Investigate Europe and Watershed Investigations have mapped toxic risks from landfill sites across the continent.
Image: Screenshot, South China Morning Post
The South China Morning Post reconstructed Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in more than 70 years. The blaze, on November 26, tore through Wang Fuk Court — a subsidized housing complex in the Tai Po district — whose eight 31-story towers house over 4,600 residents. Using video footage, on-the-ground reporting, and a minute-by-minute timeline, the team showed how bamboo scaffolding, mesh netting, and tarpaulins installed as part of the site’s renovation became a vertical conduit for flames. Illustrations of the towers and 3D interior modelling reveal how the mesh may have created a chimney effect and how winds pushed the fire laterally across the scaffolded facades, while flammable polystyrene foam sealing the windows helped the blaze leap indoors. Waffle charts showed the demographic breakdown of the towers, including which blocks housed the largest concentration of elderly residents, how many people were likely home when the Level-5 emergency unfolded, and residents’ working status. The story closed by placing the disaster, which has killed more than 156 people, in context with Hong Kong’s history of major fires.
Also worth checking out: The Straits Times feature on the Hong Kong fire.
Image: Screenshot, Financial Times
The Financial Times traced how tuna fishing could be linked to vessels where migrant crews have reported forced labor, violence, and years-long voyages at sea. The investigation focused on testimonies from Indonesian fishermen who describe beatings, confiscated IDs, poor food, and 20-hour shifts on longline fishing vessels in the Pacific. Drawing on Global Fishing Watch tracking data, the FT mapped voyages that stretch over 12 months without port calls, and overlaid that with footage obtained from Chinese and Taiwanese vessels between 2018 and 2024. Using a 3D vessel model, it showed the claustrophobic, coffin-like bunks below deck, while analyses linked South Korean boats fishing excessive hours — indicating working rights violations — in UK supply chains. Combining details from retailers, data from the Ocean Disclosure Project, and interviews with crew, the FT connected abuses across the world’s dominant tuna fleets — which account for 42% of all recorded human-rights violations between 2000 and 2020 — directly to products on UK shelves in a market where canned tuna is consumed more than any other imported fish.
Image: Screenshot, Texty
Texty analyzed how AI deepfakes have turned prominent female Ukrainian journalists into “digital avatars,” which are then used to spread disinformation. Between August 1 and September 30, 2025, reporters compiled 595 AI-generated TikTok videos using a snowball sampling technique to find hashtags related to female journalists, which they then checked with the Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector to verify whether the content was AI-generated. They found 328 clips with audio manipulation and 267 with both image and voice manipulation — which had racked up more than 24 million total views. Attackers most often repurposed presenters’ credibility to push petitions and surveys or anti-Ukrainian narratives. Texty flagged this as technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV), where the misuse of journalists’ images and voices has become a calculated tactic of manipulation that blends online harassment, reputational attacks, and threats to national security.
Image: Screenshot, Reuters
Reuters conducted a year-long visual investigation into China’s expanding civilian “shadow navy” by combining London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) ship-tracking data, high-frequency satellite imagery from BlackSky and Planet Labs, and a custom tool that monitored over 100 commercial vessels known to participate in People’s Liberation Army (PLA) maritime drills. By tracing transponder signals and validating them against satellite images, reporters were able to watch a full amphibious landing exercise unfold in real time. The data revealed that China is now rehearsing concrete invasion tactics for Taiwan, using civilian ferries and deck cargo ships. Satellite imagery captured cargo ships unloading vehicles directly onto a beach, alongside floating pier systems, amphibious assault vehicles, and ferries loading armor offshore. Experts say this marks a major leap in China’s first-wave landing capacity and shows the PLA experimenting with ways to rapidly deliver troops and equipment at multiple points along Taiwan’s coast.
Image: Screenshot, Investigate Europe
Investigate Europe and Watershed Investigations identified more than 60,000 landfill sites sitting in flood-risk zones across Europe, raising the threat of polluted drinking water and damage to conservation areas. By analyzing and mapping data from FOI requests, government departments, and public sources, the teams found that nearly 30% of landfills fall in areas vulnerable to significant flooding, meaning toxic waste could be swept into water systems, with the highest-risk clusters along erosion-prone coasts in France, England, and Wales. Using color-coded layers marking landfill locations, drinking-water zones, polluted groundwater, and coastal erosion, the reporters built a continent-wide picture of where chemicals and hazardous materials could leak into the environment. Their modeling shows the massive scale of the issue: 140,000 sites are at risk of flooding, 30,000 are inside protected conservation areas, and almost 300,000 sit above groundwater in poor chemical health. While modern, well-managed landfills pose lower danger, older dumps predating the EU’s 1999 Landfill Directive represent the greatest threat, and illegal waste sites add another layer of risk, with Europol warning that waste dumping is now one of Europe’s fastest-growing organized crimes.
Image: Screenshot, The Washington Post
In November, Tesla shareholders approved an unprecedented US$1 trillion 10-year pay package for Elon Musk, an average of US$100 billion a year. Drawing on Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational wage data, The Washington Post used human-figure illustrations to show how Musk’s incentive-based annual payout would dwarf the combined earnings of entire professions, including every US elementary school teacher. The piece also lets readers compare Musk’s projected pay to other industries. For example, he would earn more in a single year than the 41,550 US news analysts, reporters, and journalists who collectively make about US$4 billion — nearly US$96 billion less than Musk’s potential average yearly intake.
Image: Screenshot, Ojo Público
In May, a new law took effect in Peru, allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to be tried as adults. Since then, nearly 100 teenagers have been incarcerated in adult prisons, a number that has risen sharply from 14 in May to 99 by September, with Lima ranking as the city with the most young incarcerated people in this situation. OjoPúblico accessed case files of minors sent to prison and found, for example, a 16-year-old ordered into seven months of pretrial detention for extortion. According to data from the National Penitentiary Institute (INPE), these adolescents are now being investigated and prosecuted as adults for crimes ranging from attempted aggravated robbery and extortion to illegal possession of weapons and drug trafficking. Through public information requests, OjoPúblico gathered details from fiscal districts on minors under investigation under the new law, in addition to visualizing the age distribution of detained teens in juvenile detention centers and the offenses for which they have been charged.
Image: Screenshot, Bloomberg
Bloomberg Businessweek examined the real cost of deportation from the US by closely tracking a single case inside its immigration system. Reporters reconstructed the 128-day detention of one man, who was taken into custody despite holding a valid residency — so-called green — card. Using anonymized individual-level ICE records from the Deportation Data Project, facility cost agreements obtained through public records requests, and flight data from ICE Flight Monitor, which tracks immigration enforcement flights, Bloomberg mapped the man’s transfers through six ICE facilities and thousands of miles of transport. While the government says deporting a person costs US$17,121 on average, this many’s journey cost the government at least US$25,700 — a conservative estimate that excludes legal and administrative expenses. The data also showed how common long-distance shuttling has become under Trump’s renewed enforcement approach, with more than 80,000 detainees transferred more than 200 miles and over 5,000 moved that distance three or more times.
Image: Screenshot, The Journal
The Journal (Ireland), in collaboration with the European Data Journalism Network, delved into the green pledges made by fashion houses and brands, from specific targets to more general pledges. Using data collected from various sources, The Journal and partners selected the most relevant companies for their respective countries and analyzed annual and sustainability reports starting from the year 2000 to find any publicly stated pledges, looking in particular at the target year for these promises to be met. They evaluated 468 sustainability commitments from more than 200 corporate reports by 17 of the biggest European fashion companies and found that some companies, such as Puma, were very vague in their pledges, while others, like Adidas, were quite detailed. Presenting data in a series of bar and pie charts, the investigation found that only 117 of the 468 commitments have been met so far.
Image: Screenshot, Nikkei
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s daughter appears to be making more public appearances according to Nikkei’s visual investigations team, which analyzed more than 14,115 hours of Korean Central Television footage. The team built an AI-facial recognition program to identify Kim Ju Ae, flagging every appearance that reporters then manually verified. The results show an interesting pattern, since her public debut three years ago, Kim Ju Ae has appeared on KCTV for more than 600 days, averaging 24 days per month in 2025 alone, suggesting that she may be heading for the role of successor in the future. In addition, Nikkei reviewed 6,500 pages of Rodong Sinmun — the Workers’ Party newspaper — to show a similar shift, where the language used to refer to Kim Ju Ae has changed from “loved child” to “respected child.” While this doesn’t confirm succession, the trend points to the careful scripting of North Korean leader’s heir, who has notably appeared more in public than Kim Jong Un’s wife.
Image: Screenshot, Der Tagesspiegel
Berlin-based daily Der Tagesspiegel looked through the Stateparl transcripts of the city’s parliament plenary sessions from 2000 to July 2025, tracking informal interactions such as exclamations, insults, and applause. The analysis showed that the number of heckles and other interruptions has doubled over 25 years: from about 5,700 in 2000 to 11,500 in 2024, with spikes whenever new parties enter the parliament, notably after the Pirate Party in 2011 and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in 2016. The AfD is also responsible for the most insults. According to the article, the parliamentary office responsible for transcripts follows specific rules, whereby heckles are recorded with the name of the heckler and their wording whenever possible. Torsten Schneider, of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), holds the 25-year record for most interruptions, while in the current legislative period Linke leader Anne Helm is the most frequent interjector. Linguists say interjections are “part of the game” and are often done to increase attention, with many clips being shared on social media.
Hanna Duggal is a data journalist at AJ Labs, the data, visual storytelling, and experiments team of Al Jazeera and a GIJN contributor. She has reported on issues such as policing, surveillance, and protests using data, and reported for GIJN on data journalism in the Middle East, investigating algorithms onTikTok, and on using data to investigate tribal lands in the US.
2025-12-04 16:00:08
Around the world, LGBTQ+ issues have become flashpoints in wider political, cultural, and authoritarian movements. Laws around gender identity, migration, civil rights, education, and even sports increasingly use LGBTQ+ people as rhetorical and legislative targets.
“One of the things that queer people do is they shine a light on society — how society is organized and what we take for granted,” said Gina Chua, executive director of the Tow-Knight Center at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, speaking at a session at the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC25).
The impact reverberates far beyond queer communities and individual struggles.
This political pattern, Chua and co-panelist Kae Petrin, a John S. Knight journalism fellow and co-executive director of the Trans Journalists Association, warned, is spreading transnationally. Authoritarian-leaning governments are using the oppression of queer communities to justify restrictions that extend beyond LGBTQ+ people.
Investigating LGBTQ+ stories requires navigating a reporting environment defined by scarcity of data, safety concerns, and inconsistent newsroom support. These challenges shape not only how these stories are told, but whether they are told at all.
The GIJN25 panelists emphasized that the LGBTQ+ reporting beat contains opportunities for high-impact investigations, but accepted that there are still challenges.
Data about LGBTQ+ experiences and identities is either missing, mislabeled, inconsistently collected, contradictory, or trapped in dozens of incompatible systems. When data doesn’t exist, journalists must collect it and create it.
“The data is a mess,” said Petrin, while encouraging reporters to collaborate with outside experts such as NGOs and community organizers, in addition to data journalists.
Activists often have access to unpublished surveys, community-gathered records, or regional reports with information about hard-to-reach populations that can be plugged into datasets.
“Some of the most successful [LGBTQ+] investigations combined data from dozens of sources into a single holistic set,” Petrin explained, while cautioning that reporting methodologies should always be transparent about data limitations.
Gina Chua, executive director of the Tow-Knight Center at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, shared insights on how to cover stories impacting the LGBTQ+ community. Image: Suzanne Lee, Alt Studio for GIJN
In Honduras, Dunia Orellana investigated and revived the cold case murder of trans woman Vicky Hernández by reconstructing the broader pattern of anti-LGBTQ+ violence. She obtained records for more than 200 victims and traced each case through the justice system, finding that only 24 had advanced judicially. By piecing together disparate police files, court documents, and historical evidence, Orellana built a comprehensive picture of systemic impunity. Her investigation became key evidence in an Inter-American Court ruling that held Honduras responsible for Hernández’s murder — for failing to prevent, investigate, and prosecute the death of a trans person.
Interviewing LGBTQ+ people, especially those living in hostile environments that criminalize gender diverse identities, requires careful reporting. Sources may be traumatized, at risk, undocumented, or unfamiliar with media.
Zahra Nader, an Afghan-Canadian journalist, who attended the discussion, asked: “I don’t want to speak for LGBTQ people because I’m a cisgender woman. I want to give them representation. I want them to represent themselves and tell their stories. How do I do that?”
As a starting point, Petrin suggested reporters and editors read “Why Should I Tell You? A Guide to Less Extractive Reporting,” published by the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communications for conducting trauma-informed and survivor-focused interviews. While the guide is not only focused on LGBTQ+ reporting, the lessons on preventing harm during and after the interview apply.
Tips include, first and foremost, letting the source know what to expect when a story comes out. Some sources are not used to dealing with the media and may not be fully aware of how a story may affect them once it is published. The guide suggests asking specific questions, such as if any of the information an interviewee shares could potentially put them or family members living in another country in danger.
The guide also suggests giving some of the editorial control back to the respondent by having the story read back to them before publication. The time between the interview and the publication can mean changes in the level of risk faced. A readback allows the source to decide whether or not to omit certain information.
In areas where LGBTQ+ sources face criminalization, such as Afghanistan and some Middle Eastern or African states, the panelists suggested partnering with groups who are familiar with the local context and culture and can assess potential risks.
Local partners such as NGOs and advocacy groups can advise on how to approach sources, help identify who is safe to speak, and give guidance on what questions may retraumatize.
Some mainstream newsrooms resist LGBTQ+ investigative work, dismissing it as low-interest or limited in scope.
QueerAF, a community outlet in the UK, uncovered extreme delays in gender-affirming healthcare, finding that wait times at some UK clinics would, in theory, stretch to an astonishing 224 years. To document the situation, the team worked closely with community organizers, advocacy groups, and clinic-level sources to gather and verify data.
There was initially little interest in the story among mainstream newsrooms, yet once published, The Gender Clinic Files garnered over half a million views and became the outlet’s most widely read story, driven by strong community engagement and widespread public concern. The story has since been picked up by other local outlets.
For stories to have broader reach and wider resonance, the panelists emphasized the need for reframing stories to show systemic failures, and to identify where LGBTQ+ stories intersect with other pressing issues.
“Frame them as governance failures that cause administrative chaos, violate federal law, or cost taxpayers money, not [only] ‘identity stories,’” Chua urged.
2025-12-03 16:00:22
Seas and oceans cover more than two-thirds of the planet, yet remain among the least regulated and under-monitored spaces on the planet. Weak oversight, fragmented jurisdictions, and vast unpatrolled areas create conditions where environmental crimes, from illegal fishing to wildlife trafficking, continue largely out of sight.
At the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC25), speakers from around the world spoke at a panel entitled “Innovative Methodologies for Uncovering Environmental Crimes in the Ocean” to outline practical methodologies that reporters can use to investigate crimes at sea, even when evidence is limited and documentation is incomplete.
Maria Dalby of GRID-Arendal explains how jurisdictional loopholes are exploited by criminal networks on the open ocean. Image: Alyaa Abdul Aziz Alhadjri for GIJN
Maria Dalby, head of media relations for GRID-Arendal, a Norwegian environmental organization, explained that maritime crime thrives where governance is weakest. With overlapping regimes and few enforcement mechanisms, criminal networks exploit the gaps.
She highlighted two major global treaties that will reshape future reporting:
Both treaties, she said, will create fresh opportunities for investigative journalists to track how governments and corporations adapt, or fail to comply, with emerging rules.
One of the most replicable methods shared came from Daniela Castro, formerly of OCCRP. She presented a cross-border shark-fin trafficking investigation that began with a press release announcing an illicit shark fin trade seizure in Colombia. What stood out was not what officials disclosed, but what they left out. Key elements like the exporter’s identity, permit details, and the legality of the shipment were absent from official statements.
Each of these omissions became a lead for Castro. By combining elements of a previous leak, Narco Files, with public business registries and corporate filings, Castro’s team identified the exporter, whose legal representative was the son of a former Cali Cartel leader.
“You have to build your own record. Government documents alone will not give you the truth,” she said. In maritime crime, she added, these unexplained gaps in documentation often point to where illegal activity is hidden. Her approach is widely applicable beyond wildlife trafficking.
One of Castro’s most useful tools was a structured FOIA matrix. Over nine months, the team filed more than 45 information requests to Colombian agencies, including fisheries authorities, tax and customs offices, and maritime regulators.
Castro’s team created a structured spreadsheet to keep track of the FOIA requests, listing each agency, the objective of the request, and the responses received. This system became essential to stay aligned with the story’s goals over nine months of reporting.
FOIA responses, combined with on-the-ground reporting in Colombia, Venezuela, and Hong Kong, allowed the team to piece together key elements of the shipment and identify gaps in the company’s permits. Castro emphasized that this kind of multi-agency request strategy is replicable for many cross-border ocean investigations.
Indonesian reporter Abdus Somad of Jaring.id presented a complementary methodology: combining AIS vessel tracking with open source reporting from local communities.
Somad started with AIS (Automatic Identification System) data, but warned that illegal operators often turn off transponders, spoof their location, or make suspicious course changes. “When the AIS signal disappears, that’s when the real investigation starts,” he said.
That is why Somad uses a multi-layered verification process:
This hybrid digital-community model helps reporters fill gaps in data and document illegal fishing operations even in remote areas.
Indonesian reporter Abdus Somad of Jaring.id discusses combining AIS vessel tracking with open source reporting from local communities at GIJC25. Image: Alyaa Abdul Aziz Alhadjri for GIJN
Returning to the broader picture, Dalby encouraged journalists to follow how countries might implement the BBNJ and the future Global Plastics treaties. Issues ripe for investigation include:
These emerging frameworks will shape ocean governance for years, offering reporters new entry points for investigations.
The session offered a set of clear starting points for reporters:
Environmental crime at sea remains underreported, but the tools and strategies presented at GIJC25 show that even in the world’s least governed spaces, evidence can be found, and stories can be told.
2025-12-02 16:00:15
With traditional revenue streams continuing to decline, newsrooms are reimagining how to fund investigative reporting. Their most promising solutions go beyond paywalls and donation drives and focus instead on centering their readers and redefining the relationship they have with the audiences they serve.
“Instead of asking how we can get our audiences to care about our journalism, how about showing our audiences that we deeply care about them?” said Florence Wild, the chief development officer at CORRECTIV, a Berlin- and Essen-based newsroom.
During a panel at the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC25) in Malaysia, Wild and other journalists shared insights into a changing dynamic between newsrooms and their audiences. When people feel invited to participate, collaborate, and help drive real-world change, they go from being passive readers to engaged collaborators and, ultimately, financial investors in journalism they value.
CORRECTIV has no paywall, no membership system, not even an email wall, yet operates on an annual budget of roughly €10 million (US$11.5 million) a year, explained Wild.
What they do have is a daily newsletter that generates a daily conversation and feedback loop with readers. “Sometimes we do surveys. Sometimes we do a choose-your-own-adventure style of investigations where we ask people to share tips or expert knowledge to help us while we’re working on an investigation,” said Wild.
This, combined with other innovative outreach strategies, has resulted in a revenue stream where about 60–65% comes from recurring and one-off donations, and the remaining 35% comes from philanthropic donations.
One of their investigations, which revealed that high-ranking politicians from Germany’s far-right party were plotting the forced deportations of millions of people living in Germany, drove more than three million people to the streets across the country in protest. It was the largest pro-democracy mobilization since the reunification of Germany.
One week after publication, the story was translated and performed as a reading on a theater stage, where another part of the investigation previously not reported was revealed. The performance was also live-streamed on the CORRECTIV website and through the public broadcasters, amplifying its reach. Additionally, the report was translated into 10 languages, including easy and sign language, “to make sure that everyone who was most affected by this secret plan would be able to understand the message of the investigation,” said Wild.
The harassment and threats against the reporters surged, but so did donations.
Wild said the CORRECTIV model is built on the radical idea that everyone can be a journalist. The nonprofit freely shares its methodology and research tools, teaches reporting strategies through its online academy, and also has the CORRECTIV Crowdnewsroom, which offers other strategies for reader involvement and participation.
Florence Wild, chief development officer at CORRECTIV, speaking at the GIJC25 in Kuala Lumpur. Image: Zahid Hassan for GIJN
For French investigative nonprofit Disclose, impact is at the center of their reporting strategy and a key motivation of their supporter base.
“We explain to our audience how we are useful… Don’t support us for the sake of investigative journalism, support us because ultimately our investigations could lead to change and improve our society,” said Pierre Leibovici, environment editor at Disclose.
The Disclose Team has invested in trying to generate impact after every investigation, measuring impact, and communicating the impact to audiences.
One week after the publication of their investigations, which cover topics such as environmental crime and illegal arms trade, call-outs for donations are sent out.
Parallel to this, the newsroom tracks about 20 categories of impact that include government responses, legal actions, public mobilization, protests, and policy changes, as well as tips sent by citizen reporters or crowd fact-checking. Each of these outcomes is meticulously recorded in a database and reported back to readers through an annual impact report that is free to access. A donation call-out campaign is also launched during the release of the yearly impact report.
Throughout the year, Disclose sends “impact emails” after publication, updating the readers who engaged most with the story, sometimes even months after a story was published.
Leibovici recalled an impact email they sent to readers 28 months after an investigation into an offshore LNG terminal. The state ultimately mandated TotalEnergies’ CEO to dismantle the project.
“These kinds of emails about long-term impacts are important to build loyalty with our audience and to show them why they have to support us,” said Leibovici.
Sustainable journalism is not about squeezing out donations or revenue but more about cultivating relationships — reporters and readers are partners who are both contributing and investing in a shared vision of change for the better.
Create new ways for audiences to experience and engage with the story.
Experiment with alternative payment channels.
Sanne Breimer, of SembraMedia, was the research manager for Global Project Oasis, which mapped the business models, revenue strategies, and sustainability practices of hundreds of digital-native newsrooms.
In countries where supporting newsrooms through subscriptions or donations is not a popular practice, experimenting with alternative payment channels can be a way to break through resistance.
General Enumero, a Brazilian outlet, is experimenting with PIX, Brazil’s instant, no-fee payment system, which allows people to make one-off donations and contributions. General Enumero launched an experiment using PIX tied to an investigative story series on Indigenous women for COP30 in Belém, Brazil.
Transparency is essential
Whether revenue comes from donations, memberships, or grants, newsrooms have to be open about their funding sources and spending. Transparency is the backbone of credibility that assures audiences that their support does not compromise independence, but rather strengthens it
Hire a salesperson
According to Breimer, one of the strongest findings from SembraMedia’s global research was that investing in a revenue-focused staff member dramatically increases income. In some European newsrooms, the study found a dramatic jump in revenue if the outlets have a combination of a finance person, a tech person, and a sales person.
“Sometimes it feels like chicken and egg. We don’t have the money to invest. But then… if you do invest in a person with these skills, it will also come back to you,” said Breimer.
2025-12-01 16:00:51
“Raise your hand if you have been approached by a scammer in any way,” said Frontline investigative reporter Martha Mendoza, moderator of the “Scams and Scammers” session during the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC25). Most of the attendees raised their hands.
“Now turn to the person next to you and tell them how you were approached by a scammer,” she added, and the murmur of stories filled the room.
Law enforcement, governments, social media platforms, and even most newsrooms don’t fully commit to fighting the growing scourge of online fraud, even when scamming is spreading on par with drug trafficking and causes serious financial and emotional damage.
But journalists like Lian Buan, senior investigative reporter at Rappler, Emmanuel K. Dogbevi, founder and managing editor of Ghana Business News, Paul Radu, cofounder and head of innovation at OCCRP, and Mendoza are using data journalism, mapping, whistleblowers, undercover work, and traditional reporting methods to reveal a criminal activity that, according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, siphons US$1.03 trillion a year globally.
“And if you think about the lack of restrictions on cryptocurrency combined with the rapid development of AI, the place where these scams are going is quite frightening,” Mendoza noted.
When suddenly there was a boom of PhDs in Ghana, and businesspeople who had money or were politically connected began insisting on being called “doctors,” Dogbevi sensed something was amiss.
“They go to events to speak, and everybody introduces them like ‘Doctor So and So,’ but they do not exude that kind of sense of someone with a proper Ph.D., so I decided to look into it,” Dogbevi said.
After an acquaintance revealed the name of the so-called university from which he received the Ph.D., Dogbevi found its email and physical address online. But a Google Maps street view search revealed that, instead of a higher education institution, the address shown was just a dump site in London. Digging deeper, he reached out to the company by email asking how he could get a Ph.D. and received an enthusiastic reply with a list of prices and degrees, and an offer to get a Ph.D. after taking a one-week marketing seminar in Dubai.
After Dogbevi’s team revealed the scam, Ghana’s Ministry of Education announced a crackdown.
Some helpful tips:
To detect scams, OCCRP’s Paul Radu also suggests you ask yourself the following questions:
If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” dig further. You may be on the path to revealing a scam.
Once you’re certain you’ve detected a scam and you’ve collected initial information, it’s time to determine how far-reaching the structure is. Your run-of-the-mill scam might be operated by very large transnational operations linked to criminal syndicates, which involve other kinds of criminality, like money laundering, fraud, political corruption, human trafficking, and forced labor.
Mendoza described guarded compounds in Myanmar that look like business parks, with hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of people conducting phone and online scams with servers connected to Starlink. Southeast Asia workers with English skills are tricked into working in IT, then smuggled into Myanmar, and their income, which usually comes from scamming victims, is mostly spent within the same compound — in stores and with sex workers that are also trafficking victims.
As with other crimes, scamming snowballs. Small-time criminals might soon find out that they cannot operate without yielding to a larger ring, a more powerful criminal, or needing underground “angel investor” money to take their scam to the next level.
Scamming operations may also be linked to high-level politicians. Rappler’s Lian Buan described how Alice Leal Guo, a Chinese woman who posed as Filipino, ran a rapidly growing scam hub, the Philippines Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs), from a town where she was mayor. “When I got assigned POGO, I wanted to know who in the government did this. I’m very cynical that way. I always think that there’s some powerful person behind this,” Buan said.
Her reporting revealed links between POGO and the Duterte government, and in a rare instance of accountability — for a crime with alarmingly high levels of impunity — Leal Guo was sentenced to life imprisonment for human trafficking.
Rappler’s Lian Buan discusses her investigation into a scam operation’s links to the Philippine government at a GIJC25 panel. Image: Samsul Said, Alt Studio for GIJN
Here are more tips from Buan:
OCCRP’s Paul Radu highlighted the challenges of investigating scams that operate as very wide criminal networks, and the importance of collaboration in reporting on them: “It takes a network to fight a network,” he explained. And to understand how that network is set up and operated, he suggested thinking like a criminal.
Questions to drive your reporting:
“For criminals, this is a business, and crime is a commodity. They can buy packages to conduct these kinds of crimes from the black market, such as stolen identities, fake personas online, and malware,” said Radu.
A key point: once criminals set up scamming centers, they start earning a lot of money, and will need to launder the money and access other criminal systems. In a rapidly growing business they’ll need police and politicians to look the other way, and if they expand, they’ll need that in more than one country, and a small operation will become a criminal network like the one OCCRP exposed with its partners in their transnational investigation, Scam Empire, a collaborative effort by dozens of media partners that looks into the heart of this dark industry.
Even if the data is financial, the stories are human. Behind each scam is a person who was psychologically abused, maybe even tortured, and whose money, sometimes their retirement fund or their life savings, was taken from them through blackmail or deceit.
The panelists urged the assembled reporters to use their coverage to demand better guardrails and accountability from governments, tech companies, and institutions that enable scammers through direct business support or overly lax regulations and policies. Also, to push for asset seizure operations that could restore victims’ lost funds. In many cases, the authorities know or can find out where these assets are.
If enough media outlets coordinate a worldwide simultaneous release of stories that shakes public opinion and discourse in the same way the Panama Papers did, maybe law enforcement, legislators, and companies will be forced to act, and accountability will come to bear on a pervasive criminal empire.
2025-11-28 16:00:01
Around the world, access to essential medicines often depends less on scientific breakthroughs than on the market power of a few companies. Highly concentrated pharmaceutical markets can keep prices far above production costs, block competition, and leave patients dependent on expensive brands. The consequences are visible in hospitals and homes: rationed doses, skipped treatments, and families spending a significant share of their income simply to stay alive.
At the 14th Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC25) in Kuala Lumpur, investigative journalist Fabiola Torres offered a practical framework for exposing how these oligopolies are built and maintained. Torres, the founder of the Peruvian health investigations outlet Salud con Lupa, led the project Your Money or Your Health, which examined why insulin remains unaffordable in Peru despite the invention being more than a century old.
Her central message was clear: “Investigating oligopolies of the pharma is about people’s lives. It is about inequality. What they do may be legal, but it’s a scandal.”
Torres began the workshop with a case study familiar across the region: insulin. The original, 100-year-old, off-patent “human insulin” version of the drug should be cheap, widely available, and is recommended as the first-line treatment in international guidelines. But companies steer doctors and national guidelines toward newer patented “analogs” and device-based versions, making the original, affordable medicine harder to access.
Three companies, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, and Sanofi, control roughly 90% of the global market. Their newer, analog versions remain under layers of fresh patents and device protections, creating what Torres called a “modern patent barrier” around an old drug.
In Peru, insulin manufacturers and importers receive tax exemptions, but prices have not fallen. Public hospitals frequently experience shortages, forcing patients to buy insulin privately, often spending 10–20% of a monthly minimum wage. When hospitals run out, people ration doses or go without, leading to complications, disability, or death.
Torres’s team discovered that in 2024, a new clinical guidance was issued in Peru that made an insulin analog the first-line treatment. “The draft changed at the last moment… the description was for Novo Nordisk’s insulin analogs,” she explained.
A key contributor to the guideline was a leading diabetes specialist who also heads a Novo Nordisk–funded pediatric diabetes program, a financial connection not reflected in the documentation circulated to the public.
The case illustrated how market power, regulation, and medical guidance intersect, and how journalists can follow each thread.
The session in Kuala Lumpur. Image: Zahid Hassan for GIJN
Torres described how pharmaceutical oligopolies create a series of structural walls that determine who can access a medicine, and who cannot.
Torres said this concentrated market power allows a handful of companies to set the terms: which medicines enter the market, at what price. She explained how the oligopolies block cheaper, older, or biosimilar alternatives from reaching patients, who are ultimately paying the price.
When a drug patent is coming to an end, “companies file new patents on very small changes,” Torres said. This often allows them to maintain their lucrative patent rights with just minor modifications: altered doses, updated devices, or manufacturing tweaks.
Many countries lack complete frameworks for approving biosimilars, the lower-cost alternatives to complex biological drugs. In Peru, a biosimilar insulin has been approved since 2016, but remains constrained by regulatory gaps. Torres explained. Without clear guidance, Torres explained, doctors are less willing to prescribe biosimilar options.
Clinical guidelines adopted by each country are essential in shaping the prescribing habits and purchasing decisions. Peru’s guideline revisions demonstrated how undisclosed conflicts of interest can influence national policy, and shift markets toward corporate interest and higher-priced products.
Shortages, fragmented purchasing, and budget cuts make consistent access difficult. Torres documented long queues, reuse of syringes, and out-of-pocket purchases among families unable to obtain insulin through the public system.
Companies fund medical events, training, and donation programs, often without transparent disclosure. “Most of the medical events are funded by the companies,” Torres noted. Donation programs from companies can often act as a commercial strategy to influence doctors and create market preference for their patented products.
These relationships can subtly shape prescribing norms and delay the uptake of lower-cost options.
Pharmaceutical oligopolies shape access to life-saving treatments, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Torres emphasized that uncovering these structures requires attention not only to patents and regulations, but also to the “human impact” behind each barrier.
Torres offered practical steps for reporters investigating medicine markets:
For Torres, the lesson is that these markets can be understood and therefore challenged. With the right tools, journalists can expose the structures behind high prices and limited competition and help inform the public. The first step, she said, is simple: choose one medicine, follow its path through the system, and see where the trail leads.
