Opinion: Slow Journalism in the Public Interest

03/04/2015 - 09h43

When The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists started the Swiss Leaks investigation 10 months ago, we knew it was going to be big news - but we didn't realize at the time that it would send shock waves around the world, prompting HSBC executives to apologize, government officials to open inquiries in several countries and citizens to demand fiscal equality and transparency, whether through Twitter or Avaaz.

"I am a little French woman and I must live with just 450 euros for a month and it's very hard..." said one of hundreds of emails ICIJ received post publication. The reader thanked our reporters for having the "courage to say out loud what everyone else is thinking."

The story of how Swiss Leaks came about and how and why ICIJ does what it does is one I would like to share briefly with you. We are a network of independent journalists in 65 countries working since 1997 to investigative issues of global significance, from tobacco smuggling to the black trade in human tissue and the role of military contractors.

We are a nonprofit investigative news media organization much like ProPublica in New York, CIPER in Chile and dozens of similar investigative centers around the world. We do not take government or corporate money. We are funded exclusively by philanthropy (foundations and individuals) and our work is always in the public interest. There is a firewall between our funders and our editorial decisions.

Since 2012 ICIJ has been investigating tax havens which is, really, the much deeper story of economic inequality. We first revealed the real owners behind more than 100,000 secret entitles in Caribbean islands. We then uncovered how some of the world's largest companies use the tax haven of Luxembourg, in the heart of Europe, to pay tax rates of less than 1 percent. And on Feb. 9, along with more than 50 media organizations, we exposed how the Swiss branch of HSBC had opened and maintained bank accounts for arms traffickers, blood diamond dealers and tax dodgers the world over.

The story was developed over many months after our colleagues at the French newspaper Le Monde approached us with the data and asked us to organize the worldwide investigation. We then enlisted some of the best journalists from our network - and outside our network when necessary - to review the nearly 60,000 leaked files and find stories of public interest on a country-by-country basis.

The Swiss accounts of politicians, influential industrialists, criminals, people involved in high-profile scandals and celebrities clearly met the public interest test. We found a whole bunch of them from Chile to India. But we also found loads of private individuals from every country mentioned in the data, including Brazil, who merited no public exposure just because they had a bank account in Switzerland. There are legitimate reasons and ways to hold a Swiss bank account.

In some countries, journalists did not find one single name worth writing about. It takes some courage and some integrity to accept that when your colleagues around the world are breaking a huge scoop.

Some people have asked why we haven't published full lists of names. We answer: because we are journalists working in the public interest, not data dumpers, not activists, not an arm of government. We apply all the rigors of investigative journalism to the information we receive, we use state-of-the -art digital tools to analyze the information, we recruit the best local journalists to dig out the best local stories, we put context around confidential information, and we give every person we mention the opportunity to respond to the findings.

Objectivity doesn't exist some say, and we agree. But we aim to be fair and balanced journalists working in the public interest and doing as exhaustive a job as we possibly can. That is our commitment to our readers.

At ICIJ we practice "slow" journalism, working for months with an army of editors and fact-checkers who challenge our assumptions. We pick our journalists and media partners around the world carefully. In Swiss Leaks we partnered with Fernando Rodrigues, a respected investigative journalist working until recently for Folha de S. Paulo. Rodrigues, formerly the head of Abraji, the Brazilian investigative journalists association, had worked also in ICIJ's Luxembourg investigation. His story revealed how three Brazilian banks used Luxembourg to avoid a combined $90 million in taxes.

From his new post at UOL, Rodrigues has revealed details of Swiss bank accounts linked to individuals involved in the Petrobras scandal as well as to owners and associates of Rio de Janeiro's municipal bus companies. In recent days Rodrigues suggested that we add another media organization to investigate with him the Brazilian Swiss Leaks files, so ICIJ is now working with the newspaper "O Globo".

Most importantly, the Brazilian Senate has now said it will open an inquiry into Swiss Leaks. If Brazilian officials follow what their counterparts in other countries have been doing, they will request the French government the Brazil HSBC files, which involve more than 6,600 bank accounts linked to more than 8,600 clients who held about US$7 billion in 2006/2007, according to an ICIJ analysis.

Since 2010, governments that have requested the information and probed the accounts have recovered approximately US$1.36 billion in unpaid taxes and fines. Many more national tax authorities have decided to seek out the information in the wake of ICIJ's investigation.

In some ways, Swiss Leaks has only just begun.

*

Marina Walker Guevara is the deputy director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, an independent network of reporters headquartered in Washington, DC.