Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://archive.gijn.org/tag/organized-crime/page/4/)
Ján Kuciak was building a name for himself with his investigations on corruption when he was shot dead alongside his fiancée — the first targeted killing of a journalist in Slovakia’s modern history. A collective of reporters worked together to publish his final story, and then set up an investigative journalism center in his name.
Disappearing people benefits the perpetrators in several ways: it considerably complicates any investigation, the person — dead or alive — remains hidden most of the time, and it can be mixed or confused with other crimes, such as kidnapping, child abduction, human trafficking, forced recruitment, murder, or desecration of a human corpse.
The GIJN Resource Center is a leading source of tipsheets, videos, and guides on investigative and data journalism, fundraising, freelancing, and security. It’s used by journalists in 100 countries per day in 14 languages.
From investigating wildlife trafficking to reporting in the Gulf, here are our best guides and tipsheets published in 2021.
How should journalists investigate what has happened to people who have disappeared? What is the best way of dealing with their families, the organized crime groups often involved in the cases, and corrupt officials? Mexican investigative journalist Marcela Turati and Óscar Martínez from El Salvador, both specialists on reporting on transnational organized crime, shared their tips during GIJN’s Spanish language webinar.
The illicit trade in antiquities is a form of transnational crime that connects the theft at heritage sites to the elite world of the global art market, often via a web of organized crime.
The Biden White House spotlighted its support for investigative journalism as part of a new strategy for fighting corruption around the world. To strengthen the investigative capacity of journalists, it is funding the USAID’s PROSAFE project, helping to “create a regional clearinghouse for investigative journalism that provides a publishing outlet for stories too dangerous to be published with an individual byline, and providing an umbrella organization for security, mentoring, and collaboration among journalists.”
GIJN invited journalists and activists to answer one key question about reporting on illegal wildlife trafficking: What stories should investigative journalists interested in this subject concentrate on? From the trafficking of less-noticed animals to bushmeat and investigating the zoonotic diseases that can pass between humans and animals, read their answers based on years in the field, in this story.
After 80 panels and workshops — presented by 200 speakers and attended by close to 1700 editors and reporters from 148 countries — the 12th Global Investigative Journalism Conference closed with renewed resolve for innovative investigations, and a broad invitation to an in-person conference in Sydney in 2022.
Three experts who contributed to GIJN’s new organized crime reporting guide have shared insights into the modus operandi of criminal syndicates and how journalists can deploy cross-border collaborations to expose their illicit activities.
State-embedded actors are the most dominant criminal actor type in the world. The degree to which criminality permeates state institutions varies, from low-level corruption to full state capture, but across the spectrum this involvement has implications for countries’ capacity to respond to organized crime.