At the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Essar owed $3.1 billion to VTB, the Kremlin-controlled Russian bank. Our latest story, with the Guardian, reveals that its response to sanctions on VTB was to shift the loans out of the EU from Cyprus to Mauritius. www.source-material.org/essar-stanlo...

In Kenya, poor farmers have gone hungry after signing up for a biofuel project with the Italian oil major Eni, SourceMaterial’s investigation has discovered. www.source-material.org/eni-italian-...

As part of a flagship biofuel project, the Italian energy major Eni has handed out castor seeds to over a hundred thousand Kenyan farmers. In interviews with SourceMaterial, many farmers said the project has failed them. www.source-material.org/eni-italian-...

Seeds of doubt: how the Italian oil giant Eni handed out castor seeds to over a hundred thousand Kenyan farmers to make biofuel from the harvest, before leaving many without income or food. www.source-material.org/eni-italian-...

New: Last month, Indonesian authorities arrested 11 people on suspicion of bribery and disguising palm oil as a less strictly regulated byproduct. SourceMaterial can reveal that exporters targeted in this probe supplied major international companies. www.source-material.org/indonesian-e...

Indonesian exporters targeted in a palm oil bribery probe supplied major international companies, casting doubt on Europe’s ability to prevent fraud in its biofuels market, a SourceMaterial investigation has found. www.source-material.org/indonesian-e...

Shell yesterday scrapped its sale of $500m of North Sea assets to Viaro Energy, owned by Italian entrepreneur Francesco Mazzagatti. Both parties cited changing market conditions. The move followed our investigation into Mazzagatti's career. www.source-material.org/mazzagatti-v...

In Mozambique, the French energy company TotalEnergies funded troops responsible for grave human rights violations. @source-material.org and @lemonde.fr showed that TotalEnergies knew the soldiers they funded were accused of torturing, raping and killing — and kept paying them.

A major Tory donor has been sanctioned in the UK and EU for his alleged role in the Russian oil trade. The oil magnate Murtaza Lakhani was hit with a UK asset freeze and travel ban on the grounds that his activities were assisting Russia. www.thetimes.com/uk/law/artic...

🎉 Thrilled that SourceMaterial was Highly Commended at the British Journalism Awards for Energy & Environment Journalism! Huge thanks to our amazing team for all their hard work—onto the next story! ⚡🌿

Last year, we travelled to Mozambique to reveal how TotalEnergies funded troops it knew stood accused of rape and murder. Today, after reviewing SourceMaterial’s findings and reporting by Politico, the UK government announced it would withdraw a $1.15 billion loan to the project.

Amazon's environmental impact on France, like other places in the world, is bigger than it has previously acknowledged, leaked figures reveal. We shared these figures with @reporterre.net, who have published this story. reporterre.net/Amazon-explo...

NEW: Leaked documents reveal Amazon's "dirty energy empire". Soaring electricity demand in Mumbai, where Amazon has 16 data centres, has led to crumbling coal power stations being kept open—and fears AI is helping keep the world hooked on fossil fuels. www.source-material.org/amazon-data-...

NEW: We've seen documents revealing Amazon's hidden data centres—and hidden impact on the environment. The AI giant has twice as many data centres as previously reported, our investigation found. www.source-material.org/amazon-data-...

Nathan Gill has been jailed for accepting bribes to push the Kremlin's agenda. The money ultimately came from Viktor Medvedchuk, a close friend of Putin. In 2022 we took a look at Medvedchuk's relationship with Glencore, the London-listed commodities giant. www.source-material.org/glencore-and...

We're thrilled to have won the Society of Editors Media Freedom Award 2025 for environment journalism! Our investigation into the millions of UK tyres being dumped in India - and boiled in highly dangerous conditions - with our ace BBC co-reporters had widespread impact.

We are supporting a new project convened by @earthjournalism.bsky.social in Asia Pacific, involving 11 news organisations in the region, looking into the environmental impact of the AI boom. There are more stories to come, but read the first few here: earthjournalism.net/special-repo...

Our latest investigation pieces together the career of Francesco Mazzagatti, the 39-year-old entrepreneur poised to become owner of a terminal that supplies a fifth of Britain's gas. A trail that leads from a warehouse in Calabria to London's High Court. www.source-material.org/mazzagatti-v...

NEW: We've seen a leaked internal strategy document from Amazon Web Services. It shows the company strategising about keeping the true water usage of its data centres secret from the public. www.source-material.org/amazon-leak-...

NEW: Amazon strategised about ways to keep the public in the dark over the true extent of its data centres’ water use, a leaked internal document reveals. Our latest investigation with @theguardian.com www.source-material.org/amazon-leak-...

And since we're talking awards... we've been on a roll recently! 🏆 On Tuesday, we won the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism for another investigation into Russia's shadow fleet, alongside over 40 collaborators from all around Europe.

We're very proud to be shortlisted in the British Journalism Awards alongside many other excellent journalists. Here's a quick 🧵 of the stories included in our submission:

The Shadow Fleet shipping Russia's oil is already leaving trails of oil in its wake, raising the question of who will pay up if the worst is to happen. Our latest investigation with @victorjack.bsky.social of @politico.eu, using data from @skytruth.org. www.source-material.org/shadow-fleet...

NEW: Russian-linked vessels are continuing to leak oil off Europe’s shores — despite Western sanctions — underscoring the continent’s inability to rein in Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet. Read our joint investigation with @source-material.org here: www.politico.eu/article/russ...

We're delighted that The Shadow Fleet Secrets – a project we worked on with @ftm.nl and a team of international outlets – has been shortlisted for the Daphne Caruana Prize for Journalism. daphnejournalismprize.eu/edition-2025...

We're very pleased to have been shortlisted for the Society of Editors Media Freedom Awards 2025 for our story 'Burning Rubber: the poisonous afterlife of waste tyres', in partnership with the BBC.

We're delighted to have won in the 'Conflict & Climate Change' category at this year's Covering Climate Now awards with a project in partnership with our colleagues at Le Monde 🏆

At dawn in Accra, Ghana, Lydia Bamfo (51) sets out to collect plastic waste. For 25 years she’s battled the tide of rubbish overwhelming her city. Now she says the World Bank’s “solution” has done nothing to help workers like her. 🧵

NEW: SourceMaterial's investigation into a World Bank-backed plastic credits scheme shows it has sparked controversy in Accra, Ghana. Waste picker associations say they are 'sick and tired' of the 'false solution'. With @ajenglish.bsky.social: www.aljazeera.com/features/lon...

Keir Starmer said he's "tightening the screws" on Putin as he announced a raft of new sanctions, including two companies involved in crewing and managing ships involved in Russia's illegal oil exports. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

The French oil giant Total has quietly abandoned its offsetting project in the Republic of Congo, @reporterre.net reports. Back in December 2022, farmers told us the tree-planting project had barred them from their fields and threatened their livelihoods. www.source-material.org/total-oil-co...

Fresnillo is a goldminer worth £8bn, listed on the London Stock Exchange and majority-owned by the billionaire Baillères family. For years it has been locked in a bitter dispute with the Bajío agrarian community on whose land it encroached in the desert of Mexico's Sonora state.

The data centre boom in the desert: in Nevada, tech companies are transforming the landscape by building huge data centres and using vast amounts of water in the process. Read @jtemple.bsky.social's long-read for @techreviewjp.bsky.social here: www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...

This week MPs debated UK waste tyres illegally burned in India following our investigation with BBC File on 4 Investigates. "Investigators used GPS tracking devices in several consignments of waste tyres" to expose the trade, says MP @tessamunt.bsky.social. www.source-material.org/waste-tyre-p...

Pope Francis was a pontiff in a new mould: an advocate for migrant rights and global action on climate change. Those positions won him powerful enemies. In 2019 our investigation The Heretic in the Vatican revealed the extent of the plot against him. www.source-material.org/the-heretic-...

We're incredibly excited to welcome @rosafurneaux.bsky.social to our team.

NEW: SourceMaterial's investigation identified 38 active data centres operated by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in parts of the world already facing water scarcity, as well as 24 more under development. Read the full story here: www.source-material.org/amazon-micro...

“The question of water is going to become crucial,” says @lopalasi.bsky.social, founder of The Ethical Tech Society, as our investigation reveals data centres are being developed in the driest parts of the world. www.source-material.org/amazon-micro...

“They're using too much water. They're using too much energy,” said Aurora Gómez of the campaign group Tu Nube Seca Mi Río—Spanish for ‘Your cloud is drying my river’—commenting on our investigation into data centres in Aragon. Read the full story here: www.source-material.org/amazon-micro...

New from me: I've spent the last 6 months compiling a map of data centres, whose locations are generally secret, operated by Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Cross-referencing that map with areas of water scarcity shows many are in the world's driest areas. www.source-material.org/amazon-micro...

Revealed: Big tech’s new datacentres will take water from the world’s driest areas A really clever data story from @source-material.org and the Guardian. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

NEW: Big Tech’s data centre push will take water from the world’s driest areas, our investigation with the @theguardian.com has found. We saw examples from five continents of the strain data centres are putting on communities already short of water. www.source-material.org/amazon-micro...

The Carbon Offset Trap: BBC File on 4 has taken an in-depth look at the current state of carbon markets. Our reporter @lukewbarratt.bsky.social spoke to them about some of their findings. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Impact: Our investigation with File on 4 Investigates has led to action! The government is reviewing UK tyre exports to India after our report showed they end up in highly polluting pyrolysis plants, with officials "very keen" to investigate the claims. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

18 months ago, we reported on a "blueprint for disaster"—a plan to bring controversial carbon offsets into the Paris Agreement. Now the first credits issued as part of this plan have been placed in one rating agency's lowest category. calyxglobal.com/research-hub...

"The Environment Agency is undertaking an internal review of its approach to waste tyre shipments to India." Two days after our report with @bbcradio4.bsky.social on UK tyres being dangerously 'boiled' in India, the UK announces a review of the trade. www.source-material.org/waste-tyre-p...

Motorists are told that their old tyres are being recycled. Our latest investigation follows the secret trade in used tyres to India, where they are in fact broken down to make cheap home heating oil in polluting and dangerous plants. www.source-material.org/waste-tyre-p...

@fightingdirty.bsky.social has launched legal action in a bid to “shut down the illegal trade in waste tyres that is poisoning India” This comes after @source-material.org and the BBC found that millions of tyres exported from the UK are being burned illegally www.endsreport.com/article/1911...

🧵Twice a day, sirens sound in the shadow of Touk Meas Mountain in Kampot province, Cambodia. "We're often coughing," said Pheara, who lives nearby. Here, a cement kiln producing hazardous emissions is supposedly at the heart of the global fight against plastic pollution.

We looked into plastic offsetting, which major plastic producers are touting as a way of solving the pollution crisis. Our analysis shows that most plastic credits are awarded for burning plastic.