As I prepared to depart Nigeria for the United States for the 2015 conference of the Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) in Philadelphia, I received a message from the Washington DC headquarters of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists indicating that ICIJ deputy director, Marina Walker Guevara, would also be attending the four-day gathering fixed for June 3-7 of that year, and would informally meet with a few us who had been penciled down for a new, huge investigative project.
As hard as I probed, I was unable to extract details of the new project from colleagues at the ICIJ. The best that Will Fitzgibbon, my closest man there, could tell me was that the project would resemble Swiss Leaks, but would be far bigger. Will and I had worked closely together as part of a team of journalists from 45 countries that unearthed secret bank accounts maintained by global banking giant HSBC for criminals, traffickers, tax dodgers, politicians and celebrities. That project was dubbed Swiss Leaks.
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Of the 100,000 secret bank accounts operators uncovered in that investigation, 187 belonged to Nigerians, including Africa’s richest industrialist, Aliko Dangote; the owner of mobile telecom company Globacom, Mike Adenuga; and Helen, the wife of then-Nigeria’s Senate President, David Mark. Many of the accounts dated back to the 1990s and up to 2003, when a former HSBC employee, Hervé Falcian, stole the data.
Will and I had also worked together on Evicted and Abandoned, a global investigation involving more than 50 journalists from 21 countries that revealed how the World Bank Group, the powerful development lender committed to ending poverty, routinely violated its own rules for protecting vulnerable populations.
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The Nigerian end of that investigation, anchored by PREMIUM TIMES, exposed how the Lagos State government flattened the Badia East waterside slum community in February 2013 to clear land for an urban renewal zone financed by the World Bank. The neighbourhood’s poor residents were cruelly evicted and displaced without warning or compensation, in clear violation of the global lender’s own rules.
So PREMIUM TIMES’ impressive performance in the above projects, as well as in another 2013 project, Offshore Leaks, made it a ready candidate for the massive Panama Papers project, ICIJ colleagues told me. Offshore Leaks, which was my first major project for ICIJ since I was invited to join the group on 1 December 2011, exposed more than 100,000 secret companies, trusts and funds created in offshore, tax-haven locations such as the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Cook Islands and Singapore.
But once ICIJ briefed us on 6 June 2015, I immediately realised that the new project for which we were meeting over lunch in Philadelphia would be the biggest ever since the investigative journalism group was founded in 1997. ICIJ staff at the lunch held in one of the conference rooms at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 1201 Market Street, told us the leaked data contained more than 10 million records and would most likely be the most impactful in the organisation’s history. We were all advised to await a formal invitation to the project in the weeks ahead.
Enter Panama Papers
I woke up on 14 July 2015 to a message from Will in my email. It turned out to be a formal invitation from ICIJ to participate in the biggest collaborative journalism project in global history. Over the next few days, ICIJ interviewed participants from around the world via Skype.
Then, on 14 August 2015, Emilia Diaz-StruICIJ’sIJ’s research editor and Latin American coordinator, sent me a five-paragraph strict confidentiality/code of conduct agreement. Two days later, I signed and sent back the agreement. Days later, I was granted access to all the project’s platforms and collaboration tools after completing a rigorous security protocol.
I spent the next few weeks working to understand the 11 terabytes of data – two million PDFs, five million emails and every spreadsheet form created by Mossack Fonseca for 40 years. Mossack Fonseca was a Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider with over 300,000 clients worldwide. It is said to have been, at one time, the world’s fourth-largest provider of financial services in tax havens. The firm’s files were leaked by an anonymous source identified as John Doe to two reporters at the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). The newspaper then passed the massive data to ICIJ for what became a huge global investigation.
The ICIJ data team was most helpful in helping team members understand the data. They prepared guides and organised several online training sessions to explain the data and what it all meant.
At 3 p.m. Nigerian time on 12 August 2015, an online training session was held to take project members through basic searches and how to find people and items of interest. Due to scheduling and planning difficulties, I was unable to attend a meeting in Munich, Germany, to discuss the project. However, we later held an Africa-focused data and training session in Johannesburg in late September. That was followed closely by another training in Norway in early October, on the sidelines of the Global Investigative Journalism Conference that year. The ICIJ headquarters sent a five-member team, led by Director Gerald Ryle, to discuss the massive project with conference attendees.
Setting to work
It was clear from the beginning that the data and the task were too large for a single reporter to represent our newspaper on the investigation team. So the management decided to set up an initial four-member team led by me. Other members of the team were Ini Ekott (assistant managing editor), Joshua Olufemi (data analyst and head of innovation), and Richard Akinwumi (deputy head, digital strategy and technology).
The team was soon expanded to include Emmanuel Mayah (associate editor, investigations), Nicholas Ibekwe (head, investigations), Adebayo Hassan (reporter) and Samuel Ogundipe (reporter). But only four of us were allowed access to the database and the collaborative platforms – Joshua, Ini, Richard and I.
Team members were trained, and tasks were then clearly assigned to them. We worked discreetly for several months, identifying Nigerian individuals and businesses in the database, poring through tonnes of documents, analysing huge datasets, doing additional reporting to put our findings in context, reaching out to the subjects of our investigations, and producing graphical illustrations to make our stories easier to consume by readers.
For the over 12 months that the project lasted, the regular warnings from ICIJ to team members across the world, including those in our newsroom, were that:
– They must always communicate via secured platforms, preferably through the Global I-Hub, a solidly encrypted collaborative platform. If they must exchange emails, they must do so through encrypted platforms as well. All team members were mandated to submit their PGP keys and promptly inform project leads if their devices are compromised in any way.
– They must observe strict confidentiality. They must not speak about the project to anyone who is not part of the project. That includes other journalists who might have worked with ICIJ in the past. “Confidentiality of the project is perhaps our biggest concern,” Will Fitzgibbon once wrote in an email to team members. “We are relying on you all to respect the rules of the collaboration and not to talk about it. Please do not mention a new ICIJ project because that also means we get lots of emails from journalists who think they are missing out on something. And journalists are curious people.” It is to the credit of the over 356 journalists from 107 separate publications from over 80 countries that the confidentiality of the project was never breached.
– They must be open, communicate freely with colleagues on the secure I-Hub, and keep the spirit of collaboration alive. In other words, they must share resources and all information they find during their research. That they should think less of competition and more of collaboration
– They should always consider integrity and depth of reporting more important than the glory that goes to any single media outlet because of the investigation.
– They should keep native eyes on native names. It means country teams must focus more on individuals, groups and businesses that are more relevant to their local environments
– They should never approach subjects of their investigations for comments until a date is set for that by the project leads. They should publish nothing about the investigation until the 3 April 2016 date agreed for that.
A tremendously impactful investigation
The Panama Papers series, which began running on 3 April 2016, exposed offshore companies linked to more than 140 politicians in more than 50 countries – including 14 current or former world leaders.
It also uncovered offshore hideaways tied to mega-banks, corporate bribery scandals, drug kingpins, Syria’s air war on its own citizens and a network of people close to Russian President Vladimir Putin that shuffled as much as $2 billion around the world.
In the course of the investigation, PREMIUM TIMES, the only Nigerian news organisation granted direct access to the files, published more than 30 stories, with damning details revealing the secret offshore assets of many prominent Nigerians.
The newspaper’s explosive investigations revealed the secret offshore assets of Senate President Bukola Saraki and his wife, Toyin, as well as those of Mr Saraki’s predecessor, David Mark.
It also revealed how the late Governor of Bayelsa State, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, began looting his state and hiding the funds in offshore structures, and how a former governor of Delta State, James Ibori, organised the theft of the oil state’s funds via offshore companies.
The investigations also revealed a network of shell companies in offshore tax havens linked to Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, and his brother, Sayyu Dantata; as well as the offshore companies of Wale Tinubu, the chief executive of Nigeria’s biggest indigenous oil company, Oando Plc, among others.
Similarly, the reports also exposed the secret offshore company of one of Africa’s most influential televangelists, Temitope Joshua, popularly known as T.B. Joshua.
Other prominent Nigerians named in the investigation are former Minister of Defence and billionaire businessperson, Theophilus Danjuma; former Etisalat Nigeria board chair, Hakeem Bello Osaigie; Globacom CEO, Mike Adenuga; then Governor Abubakar Sadiq Sani Bello of Niger State; the late Ooni of Ife, Okunade Sijuwade; former Arik Airline Chairperson, Joseph Arumemi-Johnson and his wife, Mary, as well as two then-serving senators – Andy Uba (Anambra) and Ibrahim Gobir (Sokoto).
Other top businesspersons, politicians, and their family members were also found in the infamous database, including those currently holding public office.
The revelations from PREMTIMES’MES’ investigations sparked outrage across the land, with activists, civil society organisations, the Labour movement and the general public calling for an extensive probe into the indicted individuals.
Following the public pressure generated by the investigations, the Nigerian government opened a file on all Nigerians whose names were mentioned as operating offshore accounts in the notorious tax havens.
Similarly, the Code of Conduct Bureau, the Nigerian Police Force, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) announced they would conduct separate, independent investigations.
As expected, PREMIUM TIMES also received accolades from the Nigerian public, with many people lauding the news outlet and commending its editors and reporters for their courage and painstaking investigations. The global reporting later won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2017.
Enter Paradise Papers
On 8 November 2016, the ICIJ launched a new cross-border investigation, initially labelled Project Athena, which later became known as the Paradise Papers when the series ran. That project was based on a fresh trove of confidential information leaked to German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which once again shared it with ICIJ and its partners.
The data included 13.4 million documents from Appleby, one of the world’s largest providers of offshore legal and financial services. The data were current up to 2016 and included those sourced from the Isle of Man, Mauritius, and the Cayman Islands.
Again, PREMIUM TIMES was invited to participate in the investigation, which involved 380 journalists and 96 media partners from 67 countries.
The investigation exposed the financial ties between Russia and US President Donald Trump’s then Commerce Secretary, and the offshore interests of the Queen of England and those of more than 120 politicians around the world.
In its own local investigation, PREMIUM TIMES exposed the complex offshore world of Arik Air founder, Arumemi Ikhide; the shoddy tax affairs and complex offshore firms of Zenith Bank Chair, Jim Ovia; and those of the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele. The investigation also revealed another offshore interest of then Senate President Bukola Saraki.
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Disturbed by the revelation, the Nigerian government responded by saying it would investigate users of offshore tax shelters exposed by the project. The then Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, said the Federal Ministry of Finance’s data-mining project would use leaked data on Nigerians to cross-check tax declarations.
The power of collaboration
Both the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers investigations underlined the power of collaboration in journalism. The two projects saw hundreds of journalists across borders working together to unravel complex and crooked financial schemes by politicians and businesspersons around the world.
The advantages of collaboration over competition are legion. First, journalists learned from colleagues, acquiring new analytical, data-mining, writing, editing, and interviewing skills in the process.
The journalists, who became one big family working towards the same end, worked together on a single collaborative platform and played by the rules set by the ICIJ. They also shared resources and pointed each other to important stories.
And as we worked together, we brought global, continental and sub-regional contexts to our reporting. And our work resulted in huge impacts across the world, of a type never seen before.
*This article, authored by Musikilu Mojeed, the Editor-in-Chief of Premium Times, first appeared as a chapter in the book, ‘Nigeria in the Panama and Paradise Papers: Investigation, reporting and reflections,’ published in 2018 by the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism (PTCIJ), now known as the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID).
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