The Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy Corporations Are Using to Silence Their Critics
Weeks before he was murdered, Victor Hugo Orcasita presented his wife with a letter describing his last wishes.
Sasha Chavkin
Sasha Chavkin is an investigative reporter specializing in the environment, Latin America and public corruption. He is currently a 2022 Rainforest Investigations Network Fellow covering deforestation for NBC News and the Pulitzer Center.
Nicaraguan Indigenous Leader Who Aligned with Government Reaps Hidden Reward
As a young man, Osorno Cóleman Salomón led indigenous troops into battle against the forces of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega during the country’s brutal civil war.
Nicaragua’s Forgotten Deforestation Crisis
President Daniel Ortega is known as a repressive tyrant. But his government’s role in enabling an environmental disaster with far-reaching consequences for the global climate is often ignored.
How banks helped Venezuela's 'boligarchs' extract billions
On a rusty gas stove in Selena Ramirez’s apartment, a small flame was glowing.
Ramirez, 69, shares the apartment with her daughter and 11-year-old grandson. It is on the ground floor of a government housing complex in San Francisco de Yare, a city in Venezuela about 40 miles south of Caracas.
Leak Exposes Millions of Dollars in New Payments In Odebrecht Cash-for-Contracts Scandal
A new investigation led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reveals unreported cases and massive public works projects embroiled in Odebrecht’s bribery operation.
FDA Kept Hundreds of Thousands of Breast Implant Incidents Hidden From Public
On the eve of a hearing about the hidden dangers of breast implants, the U.S. regulator charged with informing the public about those risks revealed it has long known about vastly more injuries and other complications than it has previously disclosed.
How Medical Device Harm is Concealed
The Implant Files identified three critical failures that lead to underreporting of patient harm from implanted devices of all kinds.
Breast Implant Injuries Kept Hidden As New Health Threats Surface
Manufacturers fought to get implants back on the market. Regulators gave in. Now thousands of patients are paying the price.
Donald Trump's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and his Russian business ties
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross benefits from business ties to Putin’s inner circle
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. has a stake in a shipping firm that receives millions of dollars a year in revenue from a company whose key owners include Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law and a Russian tycoon sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department as a member of Putin’s inner circle.
Ross, a billionaire private equity investor, divested most of his business assets before joining Presi
Commerce Secretary’s Offshore Ties to Putin ‘Cronies’
In addition to Mr. Ross, the files contain references to other members of the Trump administration, including Gary D. Cohn, the chief economic adviser who was associated with 22 Bermuda entities while an executive at Goldman Sachs, and Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, who was a director of a Bermuda-based joint venture with the government of Yemen when he ran Exxon Mobil’s operations there. There is no evidence of illegality in any of their dealings.
Mr. Ross emerges as a particularly value
Trump’s organization did business with Iranian bank later linked to terrorism
Donald Trump’s real estate organization rented New York office space from 1998 to 2003 to an Iranian bank that U.S. authorities have linked to terrorist groups and Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump inherited Bank Melli, one of Iran’s largest state-controlled banks, as a tenant when he purchased the General Motors Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, according to public records reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Center for Public Integrity. The Trump Orga
How a World Bank Translator Became a Hunted Man
Human rights advocates criticize the bank for failing to speak up about the jailing of a former employee
Pastor Omot Agwa knew he was in danger.
“Greetings from Ethiopia in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” he wrote in an online message to friends and colleagues on March 11, 2015. “I am informing you that since yesterday I have been hunted by security.”
The gentle, round-faced church leader had long been an embarrassment to Ethiopia’s authoritarian regime. As a prominent leader of the Anuak
World Bank’s Business-Lending Arm Backed Palm Oil Producer Amid Deadly Land War
Glenda Chávez stands beside the grave of her father, the preacher Gregorio Chávez, whose body was discovered on Dinant’s Paso Aguán plantation in July 2012.
PANAMÁ VILLAGE, Honduras — Glenda Chávez walks between the orange trees of her family’s grove, approaching a low wire fence that divides her property from Corporación Dinant’s Paso Aguán plantation. On Dinant’s side of the fence, rows of spiky palm oil trees stretch for miles across the green landscape of northern Honduras.
“Here,” she say
How the World Bank Broke Its Promise to Protect the Poor
Beneath a gloomy white sky, more than 100 armed police poured into the slum of Badia East in the teeming megacity of Lagos, Nigeria.
As they advanced, they cracked their batons on the unpaved streets and against the ramshackle walls of the shanties.
“If you love your life, move out!” the officers shouted.
Thousands of people grabbed what belongings they could carry and fled.
Then a line of hulking excavators moved in, using their hydraulic claws to smash homes into pieces. Within hours, the
As kidney disease kills thousands across continents, scientists scramble for answers
SANDAMALGAMA, Sri Lanka — In this tiny Sri Lankan village, rice farmer Wimal Rajaratna sits cross-legged on a wooden bed, peering out toward lush palm trees that surround his home. Listless and weak, the 46-year old father of two anxiously awaits word on whether his body can accept a kidney donation that offers his only chance of survival.
In Uddanam, India, a reed-thin farmer named Laxmi Narayna prepares for the grueling two-day journey he takes twice every week. For most of his 46 years, his
Thousands of sugar cane workers die as wealthy nations stall on solutions
Maudiel Martinez is 19 years old and has a shy smile, a tangle of curly black hair and a lean, muscular build shaped by years of work in the sugarcane fields. For most of his adolescence, he was healthy and strong and spent his days chopping tall stalks of cane with his machete.
Now Martinez is suffering from a deadly disease that is devastating his community along with scores of others in Central America, where it has decimated the ranks of sugarcane workers. The same illness killed his father
Education Department Bureaucracy Keeps Disabled Borrowers in Debt
This article is a collaboration among ProPublica and the Center for Public Integrity, which are independent nonprofit investigative newsrooms; and the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, at Columbia University.
It was co-published with the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Tina Brooks can't sit or stand for more than half an hour before the pain in her lower back becomes intolerable. She suffers severe headaches and memory loss, and she has lost most of the vision in her left eye. Five d
