Finance Uncovered

22/05/2025

👀 Myanmar’s military has waged an unrelenting crackdown on digital freedom after it seized power more than four years ago.

Human rights observers say nearly 2,000 people have been arrested for criticising the junta online, or posting support for anti-regime groups, since the 2021 coup.

Yesterday, with Myanmar Now, we reported that a leading Myanmar internet service provider appears to have installed sophisticated Chinese technology capable of being used for online surveillance.

No surprise there, perhaps.

But that same company – Frontiir – has received $40m from the British, Danish and Norwegian governments who all own shares in the company.

Our Caroline Henshaw – alongside Aung Naing at Myanmar Now – collected evidence indicating Frontiir has installed equipment capable of tracking people online, blocking websites and preventing people from using virtual private networks (VPNs)

The equipment was developed by Geedge Networks, a controversial Chinese cybersecurity company founded by the so-called father of China’s Great Firewall, Fang Binxing.

Frontiir denied that it had ever “built, planned, or designed anything related to surveillance” on its network, saying any such claims were “completely false.”

Campaigners say international development funds from the UK, Norway and Denmark should scrutinise their investments and “consider imposing sanctions on companies whose operations directly or indirectly benefit the military and to stop technology transfer to those companies.”

Please read the story here 👇🏼

Chinese technology capable of mass surveillance 'installed' by Myanmar internet company funded by UKAuthorsCaroline Henshaw and Aung NaingDate21 May 2025InvestigationExposing the business interests of Myanmar militaryPartnerShareAn internet service provider backed by European state development funds...

14/01/2025

🔥African journalist training alert!🔥

Apply for our new follow the money, story focused workshop

Deadline: Jan 30
Course dates: Feb 26 - Apr 16
Theme: Extractives

Finance Uncovered invites talented journalists and researchers to apply for the first in a series of intensive online training workshops in which participants will learn and use foundational follow-the-money skills. The explicit aim of the seven-week workshops are to produce stories on specific themes in targeted regions.

Participants will take our accredited and highly acclaimed Understanding Company Accounts course, a bedrock set of eLearning modules that teach you how to analyse corporate financial statements for story leads.

We will also provide investigative and research capacity on an individual, confidential basis to help develop your stories.

Our first workshop will be themed around the extractives industries and is open to journalists and researchers from east, west, central and southern Africa.

Details below...Good luck!

19/09/2024

Who says it’s impossible to peek inside the finances of a global, privately-owned multinational business….?

On Tuesday, journalists from eight countries published "World of Pain", a collaborative investigation that splashed The Washington Post homepage.

The reporting shines a light on the international pharmaceutical businesses ultimately owned by the Sackler family.

These are the people behind the OxyContin prescription painkiller that became emblematic of the early phase of the US opioid crisis, which killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Our journalists worked with colleagues to show how the Sacklers' drugs empire in 120 countries – known collectively as Mundipharma – has continued to sell massive quantities of pain pills, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, even though the family's US business unit, Purdue Pharma, declared bankruptcy in 2019.

Finance Uncovered’s role in the collaboration was to conduct a forensic analysis of Mundipharma by gathering profits, turnover and dividend payments from the financial statements filed by dozens of affiliated companies in multiple jurisdictions.
The result gives an insight into key parts of the Sacklers’ privately-owned and byzantine-structured drug empire.

We are delighted to have worked with The Examination, Paper Trail Media GmbH, IrpiMedia, The Washington Post, Metrópoles among others.

Our mission at Finance Uncovered is to bring follow-the-money tools and techniques to fellow investigative journalists, allowing them to better tell stories involving money and power.

We do this for scores of media outlets a year. Please get in touch if you’re a journalist and you want to join one of our training programmes, or even if you just want a bit of help with a story lead.

If you like methodologies and "how we did it" pieces, this is the explanation of how Finance Uncovered journalists Malia Politzer and Simon Bowers managed to dig into the Sacklers’ international empire.

https://www.financeuncovered.org/stories/mundipharma-profits-worldwide-financial-analysis-sacklers?fbclid=IwY2xjawFY0JpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHU7vsYfetfnH-Kp5f0kEp03qt17TO37v9_whoxSMwCdHmM23RciM3oaihg_aem_bUMNV51yKEe3JiVoU6o8Yw

Revealed: How the Sackler family’s opioid empire continues to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits around the worldFinance Uncovered conducts forensic analysis of Mundipharma financials for global investigationAuthorsMalia Politzer and Simon BowersDate17 Sep 2024PartnerShareA collaborat...