2023's Best Investigative Stories from Around the World

Produced a great investigation? Send it to GIJN. We regularly promote the important work of investigative journalists around the world on social media and in our newsletters. We also go behind the scenes of innovative and essential stories in our How They Did It series. And at the end of every year, GIJN's Regional Editors have the difficult task of selecting and highlighting some of the very best investigations produced within their region or in their language.

We've curated Editor's Picks of investigations published in Bangladesh, China, Taiwan & Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, Spain and Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Turkey, as well as works produced in these languages: Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, and Ukrainian.

This newsletter edition goes one step further – we are showcasing some of the (highly subjective) best of the best investigations selection from across the globe published in 2023. Have a tour around the world with these 14 stories digging into topics that range from Russia's Internet censorship to fortified rice in India.

China, Hong Kong & Taiwan - Uncovering the Australian Lobster Smuggling Route to China

Since 2020, China has imposed trade sanctions on Australia, including a ban on lobsters from that country. As a result, these lobsters have found new markets in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In 2022 alone, Taiwanese imports of Australian lobsters surged by over 800 tons. An investigation by The Reporter found that smuggling Australian lobsters has become a burgeoning industry in Taiwan, as many of these lobsters are instead smuggled to Kinmen and Matsu islands close to mainland China, and from there, Chinese fishing vessels are illicitly transported to Chinese cities.

?? Read stories on mining fatalities, illegal constructions, and more here.

Southeast Asia - What’s Really Happening to Recycled Shoes in Singapore?

The US petrochemical company Dow partnered with the Singapore government to recycle old shoes and repurpose them to build playgrounds and running tracks. Reuters investigated how this partnership worked by placing tracking devices into 11 pairs of donated shoes and following their movement for six months. The reporting team found that most of the shoes were, in fact, exported to Indonesia, where some ended up in the second-hand market. In response, Dow said it had subsequently terminated its contract with the Singaporean company responsible for picking up shoes from the donation sites and collecting them at their warehouse.

?? Check out investigations from the Philippines, Myanmar, and more here.

Pakistan - Private Prisons in Balochistan

In February 2023, news broke that three bodies had been found in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. The dead had allegedly been killed in a private prison owned by a former member of parliament and local tribal chief, known as a Sardar. The allegations arose from a video circulating online that apparently showed one of the deceased women pleading for her life.

Muhammad Akbar Notezai’s story, in Dawn News, examines: Who were the people whose bodies had been found? Was the woman found dead the same person in the video?

?? Journalists also dug into climate change funding, arms deals, and more here.

Bangladesh - Inside a Police Death Squad

This joint investigation by Deutsche Welle and Netra News uncovered alleged human rights violations by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), a specialized force within the Bangladesh Police. The report built on whistleblower accounts, detailing the inner workings of the RAB, describing carefully planned operations that included abductions, torture, and extrajudicial killings, often followed by the planting of evidence to justify their actions.

?? Read stories on election disinformation, healthcare kickbacks, and more here.

India - Fortified Deals

The Reporters' Collective — a consortium of investigative reporters, and a GIJN member — published a three-part series exposing a scheme where fortified rice was fed to half of India despite warnings from experts about its potentially adverse effect on children. The investigation revealed that the Netherlands-based company Royal DSM NV, one of the world’s most prominent producers of fortified rice premix powder, used a web of six organizations, mainly nonprofits, to influence the Indian government. Thanks to a deal eventually announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the company ensured a massive market for its product, despite public health concerns and the finance ministry calling the move “premature.”

?? Find other stories exposing wrongdoing and systemic issues in India here.

German - Cyprus Confidential

An international collaboration — initiated by the Munich-based investigative newsroom Paper Trail Media, led by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) , and featuring 67 other media partners — reveals that Cyprus plays a far larger role than was known in enabling networks of illicit investments, shielding wealth, and moving money for authoritarian leaders, oligarchs, and other anti-democratic actors, often in ways designed to elude sanctions. It also sheds light on Russia’s clandestine influence in European countries and the Cypriot and international entities that enable it.

?? Here are other stories that German-speaking journalists have uncovered.

Russian - Censoring the Russian Internet

By analyzing and cataloging the more than two terabytes (2,000 gigabytes) of leaked data, journalists from IStories, Mediazona, RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit, Agentstvo, Dossier Center, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung shed light on the full picture of the censorship in the ‘RuNet’ — the Russian language community and internet sites. The team was able to assess the role MRFC plays in monitoring the Russian internet.

?? Read investigations by our brave colleagues in Europe and Central Asia here.

Ukrainian - Ukrainian Children Abducted

According to human rights groups, tens of thousands of Ukrainian children have been abducted or deported to Russia since Feb 2022. Journalists from RFE/RL used leaked emails and documents to try to identify suspects in the forced deportation of children from the Donetsk region; the Kyiv Independent team produced a video investigation into the fate of dozens of children taken from Mariupol; Slidstvo.Info established the alleged identities of individuals likely to have kidnapped 15 orphans from the Mykolaiv region.

?? Here are more stories produced by Ukrainian journalists in wartime.

French - The Forever Pollution Project

The Forever Pollution project is an innovative collaboration between journalists and scientists, with the latter functioning as a form of peer review for the journalists’ findings. Initiated by Le Monde and involving ~18 European newsrooms, it shows, for the first time, the true scope of Europe’s contamination with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or forever chemicals, compounds that are both ultra-toxic and persistent — some take 1,000 years to degrade.

?? Read more stories from Cameroon to Canada, and from Tunis to Paris here.

Sub-Saharan Africa - Gold Mafia

Revelations from journalism investigations do not come any bigger than this four-part series by Al Jazeera’s investigative unit. Operating undercover, the journalists infiltrated rival gangs in Zimbabwe and South Africa that turn dirty money into gold, which is then sold around the world. Al Jazeera’s I-Unit, whose team conducted most of its investigations covertly, also obtained thousands of documents related to money laundering and gold smuggling from Southern Africa.

?? Africa's journalists also dug into fraud, discrimination and more here.

Turkey - How Serbia Is a Visa-Free Gateway for Turks

According to this investigation from Balkan Insight (BIRN), young people from Turkey are increasingly using Serbia as a transit point to enter the EU without proper migration documents, with human traffickers demanding fees of up to €2,400 euros (US$2,650) per person. Investigative journalists Ya??z Alp Tekin, Sasa Dragojlo, and Hamdi F?rat Büyük analyzed court records and interviewed migrants, smugglers, taxi drivers, and human rights experts to find out more about the journey

?? More stories here, including an investigation into pollution post-earthquake.

Arabic - Amazon Workers Exploited by Labor Supply and Recruiting Firms

This investigation, a collaboration between NBC News, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), and The Guardian, details the experiences of Nepali migrant workers who were allegedly mistreated and exploited while working in Saudi Arabia for the tech giant Amazon. In response, Amazon acknowledged violations of its standards and promised to take action, including compensating workers and improving oversight of its supply chain.

?? Read more stories that highlight the relentless work of Arab journalists.

Spain and Latin America - Digital Mercenaries

From troll factories to politically connected consultants, and everything in between, the world of digital mercenaries is vast, ever-changing, and profitable. In this high-stakes setting, where everything from votes to reputations are up for grabs, who are the power players and what motivates them? This cross-border collaborative project — created by independent media outlets from across Latin America — digs into this murky world to reveal the tricks used and how transnational manipulators influence millions of citizens in their political choices.

?? Here are more stories from the Mexican Caribbean to Spain’s Costa del Sol.

Portuguese - The Bruno and Dom Project

There was no more harrowing moment for Brazilian journalism in 2022 than waiting for news about British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenist Bruno Pereira. It took 10 days between the news of their disappearance and the confirmation that they had been murdered in the Vale do Javari Indigenous land, in the Brazilian Amazon. To honor the duo’s legacy, The Bruno and Dom Project was launched close to the one year anniversary of the crimes. Coordinated by Forbidden Stories , the initiative involved more than 50 journalists from 10 countries, including GIJN’s Brazilian members Abraji - Associa??o Brasileira de Jornalismo Investigativo and Repórter Brasil , and outlets such as Amaz?nia Real, Folha de S?o Paulo, TV Globo, and the Portuguese outlet Expresso.

?? Read more stories from Brazil, Portugal, and Mozambique here.

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