Articles by Bureau of Investigative Journalism
We found 49 results.
The Del Monte Deaths: Shocking Claims of Violence at Pineapple Plantation
Edwin Okoth, Matthew Chapman and Emily Dugan | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2024
When we first published the litany of allegations against Del Monte’s security guards last June, the company committed to investigating what had happened. Kenya’s human rights commission started investigating. Some supermarkets were appalled enough to stop stocking canned pineapple from the farm.
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The Del Monte Deaths: Shocking Claims of Violence at Pineapple Plantation
Edwin Okoth, Matthew Chapman and Emily Dugan | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Jun 2023
21 Jun 2023 – Security guards working for the multinational food company Del Monte in Kenya have been accused of killing and brutally assaulting local villagers suspected of trespassing on its farm.
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Over 800 Million Trees Felled to Feed Appetite for Beef from Brazil
Andrew Wasley, et al. | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Jun 2023
2 Jun 2023 – More than 800 million trees have been cut down in the Amazon rainforest in just six years to feed the world’s appetite for Brazilian beef, despite the climate crisis. A data-driven investigation by TBIJ, the Guardian, Repórter Brasil and Forbidden Stories shows systematic and vast forest loss linked to cattle farming.
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Money-Laundering Ring Pushed $4 Billion through HSBC
Franz Wild and Ben Stockton | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism - TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Aug 2021
28 Jul 2021 – A string of scandals has unravelled at HSBC since it admitted in 2012 to laundering hundreds of millions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels. Today, under the nose of a court-appointed monitor, HSBC uncovered a $4.2bn money laundering network using client accounts in Hong Kong. There’s no indication the findings were ever reported to the regulators.
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‘Held to Ransom’: Pfizer Demands Governments Gamble with State Assets to Secure Vaccine Deal
Madlen Davies , et al. | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism - TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Mar 2021
23 Feb 2021 – Pfizer has been accused of “bullying” Latin American governments in Covid vaccine negotiations and has asked some countries to put up sovereign assets, such as embassy buildings and military bases, as a guarantee against the cost of any future legal cases, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism can reveal.
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Walmart among US Retail Giants Selling Beef Linked to Amazon Destruction
Andrew Wasley and Alexandra Heal | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2021
13 Feb 2021 – Walmart, Costco and Kroger are selling Brazilian beef products imported by JBS–the world’s largest meat company–which we previously revealed has been embroiled in a string of deforestation allegations. Campaigners Call for Major Grocers to Cut Ties with Controversial Brazilian Meat Firm JBS
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Misinformation Market: The Money-Making Tools Facebook Hands to Covid Cranks
Jasper Jackson and Alexandra Heal | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism - TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Feb 2021
31 Jan 2021 – Hundreds of Facebook pages have been making money using the social network’s tools while spreading misinformation about Coronavirus on social media. But so long as you keep using its platform, Facebook doesn’t seem to care. The video opens with a question: “Could this be bio-terrorism?”
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Spy Companies Using Channel Islands to Track Phones around the World
Crofton Black | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism - TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Dec 2020
16 Dec 2020 – Surveillance firms can track the location of mobile phone users, intercept their messages and calls and access their sensitive data, thanks to vulnerabilities in how phone networks communicate with each other, our story shows. Experts told us the Channel Islands are an easy route in. We found evidence of surveillance attempts in more than 60 countries.
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Brazilian Meat Giant Trucked Cattle from Deforested Amazon Ranch
Andrew Wasley, Alexandra Heal and André Campos | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism - TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Aug 2020
27 Jul 2020 – “Caught red-handed”: The world’s biggest meat company has been using its own trucks to transport cattle from an illegally deforested ranch in the Amazon to a “clean” farm that supplies its abattoirs. JBS continues to deny this. The company’s meat ends up all over the world – in supermarkets, fast food, ready meals and school dinners, sold by major brands.
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Crisis at the Commission: Inside Europe’s Response to the Coronavirus Outbreak
Ben Stockton, Céline Schoen and Laura Margottini | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism - TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jul 2020
15 Jul 2020 – While the pandemic is still raging across the world, people are understandably already asking questions about whether the right things were done, at the right time, in the right way. This week our in-depth exposé of Europe’s handling of the coronavirus was published with partners in 14 countries across the continent.
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Development Banks Funding Industrial Farms around the World
Andrew Wasley and Alexandra Heal | The Bureau of Investigative Journalism - TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jul 2020
2 Jul 2020 – The International Finance Corporation–the commercial lending arm of the World Bank–and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have provided $2.6bn for pig, poultry and beef farming, as well as dairy and meat processing, despite their vast contribution to the oncoming climate catastrophe. The UK government is a major funder of both banks.
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Record Number of Fires Rage around Amazonia Farms That Supply the World’s Biggest Butchers
Andrew Wasley , Alexandra Heal , André Campos and Sam Cutler – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
16 Dec 2019
10 Dec 2019 – Our latest findings show that when the Amazon burned this summer, fires were three times more common in the areas around meat plants and abattoirs than elsewhere in the rainforest.
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German Appetite for Beef Eats into Brazilian Rainforest
Andrew Wasley and Alexandra Heal – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
28 Oct 2019
21 Oct 2019 – Germany imported €216m worth of Brazilian beef over five years from meat companies linked to major deforestation in the Amazon and other vital areas.
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How US “Good Guys” Wiped Out an Afghan Family
Jessica Purkiss and Mateen Arian - The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
30 Sep 2019
This week marks a year since Masih Ur-Rahman Mubarez’s entire family was killed. On September 23 2018, his house was hit by an airstrike. Inside were his wife, seven children and four other young relatives. No-one survived. After six months of investigation, Masih finally got some answers. After multiple denials from the US military that they were responsible, or that there had even been an airstrike in the area, we found a vital piece of evidence in the wreckage of his home that proved that denial false.
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How a Major Meat Company Is Linked to Amazon Deforestation
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2019
In an investigation with Repórter Brasil and The Guardian, we found that the world’s largest beef supplier is buying cattle from a company that illegally grazes its cows on deforested land.
→ read full articleCIA Torture Unredacted: Revealing What Was Hidden in the US Senate Torture Report
Crofton Black – Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
15 Jul 2019
10 Jul 2019 – Masood Anwar, a prominent Pakistani journalist, received an unexpected tip: “There were men in masks. They took a hooded man onboard in the early hours. Someone videotaped the entire thing.” Anwar’s story would be the start of a thread which led to the heart of the CIA’s most secret “War on Terror” operation: the “rendition, detention, interrogation” programme, a nine-year covert effort which had scores of prisoners flown around the globe to be tortured in undisclosed sites.
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A Security Company Cashed In on America’s Wars—And Then Disappeared
Abigail Fielding-Smith, Crofton Black, and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – The Atlantic,
4 Feb 2019
29 Jan 2019 – Death and disappearance: Inside the world of privatised war. Sabre International Security employed guards for the Canadian embassy in Kabul. When a bombing left many of them dead or wounded, the company vanished.
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Afghanistan in Photos: When a US Strike Hits a Family Home
Andrew Quilty , Abigail Fielding-Smith , Jessica Purkiss – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
14 Jan 2019
2 Jan 2019 – The doors of Emergency Hospital in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, swung open: Ehsanullah, 14, his face a swollen mess of flesh, was the first to be wheeled in. His younger brother Hedayat, 4, was next. He had deep wounds up and down both legs, a skull injury and a bubble of intestine was protruding from a small hole in his abdomen…
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Big Pharma Fails to Disclose Antibiotic Waste Leaked from Factories
Madlen Davies and Sam Loewenberg - The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
29 Jan 2018
24 Jan 2018 – Many of the world’s leading drug manufacturers may be leaking antibiotics from their factories into the environment according to a new report from a drug industry watchdog. This risks creating more superbugs. The report surveyed household-name pharmaceutical giants like GSK, Novartis and Roche.
→ read full articleThe Rise of the “Megafarm”: How British Meat Is Made
Andrew Wasley and Madlen Davies – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
24 Jul 2017
17 Jul 2017 – Intensive livestock farms have grown by a quarter in the last six years. The biggest farms house more than a million chickens, 20,000 pigs or 2,000 cows at any one time. Behind the data lies the need for a fundamental debate about what we want to eat as a nation, and what price we are prepared to pay for that food.
→ read full articleBig Pharma’s Pollution Is Creating Deadly Superbugs while the World Looks the Other Way
Madlen Davies – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
15 May 2017
6 May 2017- Industrial pollution from Indian pharmaceutical companies making medicines for nearly all the world’s major drug companies is fuelling the creation of deadly superbugs, suggests new research. Global health authorities have no regulations in place to stop this happening.
→ read full articleWorse Than MRSA: Doctors Call for Urgent Action on Deadly Superbug Threat
Madlen Davies - The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
1 May 2017
21 Apr 2017 – Doctors are warning that the rise of an almost untreatable superbug, immune to some of the last-line antibiotics available to hospitals, poses a grave threat and needs urgent government action.
→ read full article‘A National Disgrace’: Catalogue of Animal Suffering at Scottish Abattoirs Revealed
Andrew Wasley and Rob Edwards - The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
24 Apr 2017
19 Apr 2017 – Cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens have been found injured, emaciated, diseased or dead on arrival at abattoirs. Numerous animals were slaughtered while heavily pregnant or had to be repeatedly stunned before they were killed. “It shows without a shadow of a doubt that the business of slaughtering animals is brutal and all too often is conducted without a thought for either the law or the appalling suffering of the animals involved.”
→ read full articleThe Future of Fake News? ‘Refugee Crime’ in Germany
Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
6 Mar 2017
A misleading map of ‘refugee crime’ in Germany distorts reality in a slick and sophisticated way.
→ read full articleObama’s Covert Drone War in Numbers: Ten Times More Strikes than Bush
Jessica Purkiss and Jack Serle – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
23 Jan 2017
17 Jan 2017 – Obama embraced the US drone programme, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in those countries, according to reports logged by the Bureau.
→ read full articleDonald Trump and the Media’s ‘Epic Fail’
Rachel Oldroyd – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
14 Nov 2016
One of the most egregious failings of the media in the US election was their chase of audience share at the expense of substantial reporting. As happened in the UK in the run up to Brexit, lots of American media outlets treated Trump as entertainment – his soundbites, as shocking as they were, provided fantastic content on social media – and elevated his untruths to their front pages.
→ read full articleDrug Resistance: How Dirty Production of UK National Health Service Drugs Helps Create Superbugs
Andrew Wasley and Madlen Davies – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
24 Oct 2016
18 Oct 2016 – The NHS is buying drugs from pharmaceutical companies in India whose dirty production methods are fuelling the rise of superbugs, and there are no checks or regulations in place to stop this happening. The growth in superbugs – infections which are resistant to antibiotics – is one of the biggest public health crises facing the world today, and pollution in drug companies’ supply chains is one of its causes.
→ read full articleDrone Warfare – Obama Drone Casualty Numbers a Fraction of Those Recorded by the Bureau
Jack Serle – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
4 Jul 2016
1 Jul 2016 – The US government today claimed it has killed between 64 and 116 “non-combatants” in 473 counter-terrorism strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya between January 2009 and the end of 2015. This is a fraction of the 380 to 801 civilian casualty range recorded by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism from reports by local and international journalists, NGO investigators, leaked government documents, court papers and the result of field investigations.
→ read full articleMigration Crisis Infographic: The 95,000 Unaccompanied Children Seeking Asylum in Europe in 2015
Safya Khan-Ruf, Maeve McClenaghan, Gemma Newby and Eilidh Urquhart – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
18 Apr 2016
The numbers and their voices can be read and heard by clicking on the image for our unique infographic below.
→ read full articleBanned in America, Soaring Use in Britain: The Poultry Farm Drugs That Put Human Lives at Risk
Andrew Wasley and Victoria Parsons – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
15 Feb 2016
7 Feb 2016 – Antibiotics banned in US chicken farms a decade ago over links to the spread of potentially deadly bacteria in humans have been used in significantly increased quantities by Britain’s poultry industry, an investigation reveals today.
→ read full articleThe Boom and Bust of CIA’s Secret Torture Sites
Crofton Black and Sam Raphael – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
19 Oct 2015
In nine months of research, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Rendition Project have pieced together the hidden history of the CIA’s secret sites. Although many published accounts of individual journeys through the black site network exist, this is the first comprehensive portrayal of the system’s inner dynamics from beginning to end.
→ read full articleMigration Crisis – Frontex: EU Border Agency to Get Huge Budget Hike as Boss Warns of Failings with Migrant Fingerprint Checks
Nick Mathiason, Victoria Parsons and Ted Jeory – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
21 Sep 2015
18 Sep 2015 – Frontex, the EU’s external border agency, is being given a 54% budget rise next year as part of a new European Commission package of initiatives to tackle the continent’s refugee and migrant crisis.
→ read full articleEurope’s Refugee Crisis: Is Frontex Bordering on Chaos?
Nick Mathiason, Victoria Parsons and Ted Jeory - The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
21 Sep 2015
15 Sep 2015 – The Bureau Investigates the EU’s Frontline Border Agency
→ read full articleReaping the Rewards: How Private Sector Is Cashing In on Pentagon’s ‘Insatiable Demand’ for Drone War Intelligence
Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
3 Aug 2015
When you mess up, people die – An intelligence contractor. A misidentification of an enemy combatant with a weapon and a female carrying a broom can have dire consequences – An unnamed intelligence contractor.
→ read full articleRevealed: The Private Firms Tracking Terror Targets at Heart of US Drone Warfare
Abigail Fielding-Smith and Crofton Black – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
3 Aug 2015
Corporate staff are reviewing top-secret data and helping uniformed colleagues decide whether people under surveillance are enemies or civilians.
→ read full articleSchooled in Britain, Deported to Danger: UK Sends 600 Former Child Asylum Seekers Back to Afghanistan
Maeve McClenaghan- The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
20 Jul 2015
16 Jul 2015 – Hundreds of Westernised young men who grew up in Britain after fleeing war-torn Afghanistan as children have been forcibly returned to their home country due to what experts believe is an inhumane shortcoming in the UK asylum system.
→ read full articleCounting the Cost of US Drones: Local Wars Killing Local People
Jack Serle – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
11 May 2015
It is now 13 years since the US started its covert drone wars and it is clear its targets have expanded beyond al Qaeda. “I am not convinced that what we are doing in Yemen makes sense either politically or even that we’re striking the right people… You get more of a sense that we may be involved in a local conflict more than a global conflict.” — Former DOD official
→ read full articleThe Rendition Project
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, et al. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 May 2015
The Rendition Project is a collaborative research initiative by the University of Kent, Kingston University, the legal action charity Reprieve, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism aiming to bring academic expertise to research the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation programme.
→ read full articleOnly 4% of Drone Victims in Pakistan Named as Al Qaeda Members
Jack Serle – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
20 Oct 2014
The Bureau’s Naming the Dead project has gathered the names and, where possible, the details of people killed by CIA drones in Pakistan since June 2004. On October 11 [2014] an attack brought the total number of drone strikes in Pakistan up to 400.
→ read full articleDrone Warfare: Who Is Dying in Afghanistan’s 1,000-Plus Drone Strikes?
Alice K Ross – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
28 Jul 2014
Horia Mosadiq, Afghanistan researcher for Amnesty International, said operations could increasingly rely on the CIA and special forces, which both operate under high levels of secrecy, posing even bigger challenges for those attempting to track casualties.
→ read full articleCovert Drone War: UN Report Identifies 30 Drone Strikes That Require ‘Public Explanation’
Alice K Ross – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
10 Mar 2014
1 Mar 2014 – A UN counter-terrorism expert has published the second report of his year-long investigation into drone strikes, highlighting 30 strikes where civilians are reported to have been killed.
→ read full articleCitizenship Revoked: UK Home Secretary Pushes Through ‘Controversial’ Powers to Make People Stateless
Alice K Ross and Patrick Galey – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
3 Feb 2014
Currently [Home Secretary] May cannot revoke a person’s citizenship if it would make them stateless, so the power can only be used on dual nationals who would still have another nationality even if they lost their British citizenship.
→ read full articleDrone Warfare: More Than 2,400 Dead as Obama’s Drone Campaign Marks Five Years
Jack Serle – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
27 Jan 2014
Obama has launched over 390 covert drone strikes in his first five years in office. Drones have come to dominate Obama’s war in Yemen as much as in Pakistan.
→ read full articleCovert Drone War: Bureau investigation finds fresh evidence of CIA drone strikes on rescuers
Chris Woods – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
5 Aug 2013
A field investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in Pakistan confirm that the CIA last year briefly revived the controversial tactic of deliberately targeting rescuers at the scene of a previous drone strike. The tactic has previously been labelled a possible war crime by two UN investigators.
→ read full articleSix-Month Update: US Covert Actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia
Jack Serle and Chris Woods – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
8 Jul 2013
• Bureau data suggests the CIA is killing fewer people in each strike in Pakistan.
• Lack of official transparency means it remains unclear who is carrying out strikes in Yemen.
• No reports of US operations in Somalia but al Shabaab continues to launch attacks.
Obama Terror Drones: CIA Tactics in Pakistan Include Targeting Rescuers and Funerals
Chris Woods and Christina Lamb – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
18 Feb 2013
The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed. The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a ‘targeted, focused effort’ that ‘has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties.’
→ read full articleEmerging From the Shadows: US Covert Drone Strikes in 2012
Chris Woods, Jack Serle and Alice K. Ross – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
7 Jan 2013
In one of the biggest news stories of the year, in May [2012] the New York Times revealed that President Obama was personally deciding whether to kill some individuals. He ‘counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.’ As the Bureau noted at the time, ‘The revelation helps explain the wide variation between credible reports of civilian deaths in Pakistan by the Bureau and others, and the CIA’s claims that it had killed no ‘non-combatants.’
→ read full articleRevealed: US and Britain Launched 1,200 Drone Strikes in Recent Wars
Chris Woods and Alice K Ross – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
10 Dec 2012
Covert Drone War – Recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq have seen almost 1,200 drone strikes over the past five years, according to new data released to the Bureau [4 Dec 2012]. The information, much of it classified until now, shows that US Air Force drones carried out most of the 1,168 attacks. However British crews are also responsible for a significant portion of the strikes in Afghanistan.
→ read full articleThe Biggest Document Leak in History Exposes Real War
Bureau of Investigative Journalism – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Oct 2010
The data reveals how hundreds of civilians were killed by coalition forces in unreported events. There are numerous claims of prison abuse by coalition forces even after the Abu Ghraib scandal. The files also paint a disturbing portrait of widespread torture in Iraqi detention facilities. As the war progresses the documents record a descent into chaos and horror as the occupation sparked civil war. In case after case, the logs record thousands of bodies, many brutally tortured, dumped on the streets of Iraq.
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