Our undercover investigation into Papua New Guinea palm oil companies alleges corruption, child labour, apparent tax evasion, deforestation, worker deaths and paying police to assault villagers. The product made its way into world famous brands including Kelloggs, Nestle, Hersheys, Colgate, Danone, Imperial Leather, Carex, Strepsils, Dettol, Neurofen and Finish. The details are harrowing. One executive chuckled as he boasted of paying police to attack villagers who say they were hit with sticks & held at gunpoint. 65 men were allegedly incarcerated in a sweltering metal cargo crate for a full day in tropical heat with no water. Our report details numerous fatal accidents, blunt force deaths and amputations on unsafe plantations. The youngest to die was an eleven-year-old boy, likely poisoned by pesticides. We went undercover as commodity traders to meet the executives, who told of ‘unofficial fees’ of up to fifty thousand Kina (£10,000) paid to ministers & board members. One palm oil boss said exports to India were disguised as Malaysian in origin, an apparent tax fraud. You can read the companies’ responses in the full article.

The burning of the Brazilian Amazon in 2019 to make way for cattle farms shocked the world. But we revealed six of the world’s worst agribusinesses linked to widespread deforestation were financed by household name banks and investors such as Barclays, HSBC, Santander, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. In total more than 300 institutions backed the firms to the tune of $44bn.

Back in 2011, a Ghanaian friend told me something amazing. At the annual festival of voodoo in Benin, he saw a voodoo sorcerer cut off a woman’s head and reattach it… whereupon she came back to life. Six years on, I returned with him to Benin, seeking out the most powerful sorcerers in the land to bear witness to their magic. This documentary I presented for the BBC World Service is the result.

One of the most shocking investigations I have worked on: how ten firms of London estate agents routinely turned away black tenants because of the colour of their skin. This exposé was all over Fleet Street and was subsequently named the best investigation in Europe at the Circom Awards.

A long read for the New Statesman magazine, in which I explain what mammoth Brazil’s Car Wash corruption scandal was, how it worked, and illustrate its devastating impact on the Brazilian people. Our statistical analysis suggests the lost taxes would have paid for three million nurses or a years education for 17 million children.

I exposed the cosmetics shops willing to deal in illegal skin whitening cream, containing a banned chemical that can damage the liver and nervous system. Staff were placing products on shelves they knew to contain the active ingredient, despite it not being listed on the ingredients. That means unwilling customers who thought they could trust something displayed openly were put at risk. Watch the film for my maiden doorstep!

What’s the most expensive object ever built? I went on a statistical journey for Radio 4’s More or Less programme from the Great Pyramid of Giza to the International Space Station, via the Great Wall of China and a rather pricey nuclear reactor.

The hand in the photograph belongs to the Porsche-driving boss of a training centre in west London. He is reading answers from a big screen to labourers so they can cheat a test in building safety, thus becoming licensed to work on any site in the country. Construction is the UK’s most deadly industry – during the Afghan war more of our builders were killed than British soldiers. This was one of several firms we busted. The investigation ran as a 13 minute film on Newsnight and as a result of our enquiries 6,000 labourers have been forced to resit fraudulent exams. As the film went to air, the editor of Newsnight tweeted: “If Carlsberg did bad guys they would be this fake safety qualification guy.” Why was he flagrantly putting lives at risk in this way? To paraphrase Fargo: for a little bit of money. 

Our investigation exposed the self-styled ‘Reverend’ who believes you can cure everything from aids to Alzheimer’s by making patients swallow doses of bleach – and the US cult-style ‘church of healing’ from which he takes inspiration. I have encountered some wacky characters during my time as a journalist, but this lot took the biscuit. Mind-boggling stuff.

Say hello to a “profiteering” care agency boss who took hundreds of pounds from low-paid carers who were desperate to work for jobs that never materialised. One ripped off worker said: “They sold me dreams and made promises they didn’t keep.”

One of my involvements in the case of the corrupt Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman. We revealed claims that employees of his council were threatened with the sack if they did not each illegally obtain 100 votes for the disgraced politician. I was in the High Court to see him face justice – sheer courtroom drama.

Blind people refused by minicab drivers who won’t allow a guide dog on board their vehicle? Surely not! Sadly yes. We documented shocking treatment of the blind people and wheelchair users in twenty-first century London.

Had your mobile phone nicked in London? These are the guys who enable a crime that can shatter peoples’ confidence and feelings of security. We went undercover to expose a black market of shops willing to deal in the stolen devices. The Metropolitan Police subsequently raided the businesses we caught.

After the killing of Lee Rigby in Woolwich, I found a banned Islamic scholar’s texts on offer to the public… at Woolwich Public Library. Dr Zakir Naik was barred from the UK in 2010 by the Home Secretary. One chapter was entitled: “The inequality of male and female witnesses.”

In it Dr Naik argued a male testimony is worth that of two females in financial matters. The story was reported prominently in the Daily Telegraph.

It’s not only methadone given to drug addicts by the NHS – some are even prescribed heroin. Not many people knew that.

How Newham Council spent a whopping £111m on its new headquarters… including £1,800 on individual, designer light fittings. This in what is one of the poorest boroughs in the UK. The exclusive was followed up on the front page of the Metro and in the Sunday Times. Newham Council insists to this day that its headquarters – which cost a full third as much Arsenal’s world famous Emirates Stadium – actually saves taxpayers money.

We revealed how the world’s top three commodity traders, Glencore, Trafigura and Vitol, are all implicated in Brazil’s Car Wash scandal, one of the biggest corruption cases of all time. Few have heard of these vast, shadowy companies, but their combined turnover is greater than the GDP of Austria. We allege that officials at Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras were bribed to fix oil prices at below the market rate… with senior executives at Vitol and even Trafigura’s founder aware of what was going on. All three firms deny wrongdoing.

A difficult but important piece of data journalism, showing for the first time how prevalent polyethylene-based cladding – as used on Grenfell Tower – is across the UK. At least 52 tower blocks in London utilise the material.

More than 100 security guards had their licences revoked after our undercover investigation revealed they had been obtained fraudulently. Police are investigating the 251 individuals currently implicated in what one security expert called an “astounding” fraud.

Our undercover investigation into dodgy pharmacists revealed no less than nine independent pharmacies willing to selling powerful drugs including opiates and Valium over the counter for cash. SFollowed up by the Daily Mail and the London Evening Standard.

Update: Three years on, and nine of the pharmacists we exposed have been banned from practise. The General Pharmaceutical Council used our investigation to appeal for greater powers from the government, and as a result expects to be able to carry out its own covert surveillance of rogue pharmacists. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-35720655

A big piece of data journalism I did on the hoary old topic of parking enforcement – the revelation that £23m of parking tickets awarded by London councils may have been unlawful.

Piece of data journalism showing how councils across the UK used litter fines as a ‘cash cow’. This exclusive was followed up with a front page story in the Daily Mail.

What is the life of an illegal labourer in London really like? Before Romanians got the right to work in the UK, we penetrated a murky and dangerous world to highlight the slave labour wages and appalling conditions endured by desperate workers. A difficult investigation in which potential risks to our undercover operatives were at the forefront of our minds.

I reported from Woolwich the day after Lee Rigby was slain by Islamic extremists. The atmosphere was tense and sombre and rather scary.

As parking stories go, this was a jolly good one. A London council illegally set its traffic wardens minimum quotas of parking tickets to achieve, with predictable results. Another of those glorious ‘leaked document’ stories I am so fond of. I remember rushing to get this to air before flying to Ethiopia to research Foretold by Thunder…

The UK Border Agency – then branded “not fit for purpose” – gave its staff more than £3.5m of taxpayer’s money in bonuses in a single year. The Times picked up this story and were good enough to credit our digging.

One of a series of stories I worked on with Kurt Barling following the entirely avoidable fire at Lakanal House tower block in Southwark, which killed six. Fashion designer Catherine Hickman died after being told to stay in her flat by firefighters. Those that ignored the advice lived. She was found with her phone in her hand. An awful tragedy.

One of the stories I am proudest of, and the scoop that set Kurt and I off on a several-year long exposure of the shocking fire safety in London’s social housing stock. Following a paper trail of old reports and documents, I discovered Southwark Council knew Lakanal House was a fire hazard – but did nothing to make it safe. Among the lives lost there were one father’s entire family. His wife, son and daughter all perished.

Here Mr Barling and I revealed that more than 300 high rises in London had not even been checked for fire safety by the authorities. This precipitated every tower block in London that had not been risk assessed rapidly having one done. It is not out of the realms of possibility that this story saved lives.

Our investigation into the fire safety of London’s tower blocks following the Lakanal disaster found some 102 inhabited buildings considered even more dangerous than the killer high rise.