Author: Julius Mariveles

How criminals make their crimes legal

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‘The biggest criminals write laws that make their crimes legal’

By Giannina Segnini

Giannina Segnini is the director of the investigative team at La Nación newspaper in Costa Rica. This month she was awarded one of Latin America’s most prestigious distinctions, the Gabriel Garcia Marquez award for excellence in journalism. In this interview, she discusses her bribery investigations that helped put two former presidents of Costa Rica in jail, and offers advice to aspiring investigative journalists.

(This article was first published November 27, 2013 on the website of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ website)

Your work on the “Finnish Project” and Alcatel bribery investigations helped send two former presidents of Costa Rica to jail. How did you find out about the story?

The work was done as a team with my colleague Ernesto Rivera. We investigated two different cases back in 2004 that triggered the criminal investigations against the two former presidents.

The first case, known in Costa Rica as the “Finnish Project”, related to a US$39 million purchase of medical equipment from Finland. We proved that the representative of the Finnish company in Costa Rica gave a house, as a bribe, to the president of the Costa Rican Public Health Institution (CCSS), Eliseo Vargas. He had promoted, as a congressman, a law that made possible the “Finnish Project.”

Giannina Segnini.

We got access to the bank accounts where the Finnish money flowed, and we analyzed their operations. We discovered that a company related to former president Rafael Angel Calderón also received money. We discovered from this company’s accounts that besides the Finnish money, there was only one other source of money: a rural law firm. This law firm had deposited half a million dollars into the company’s Panamanian accounts.

Digging into the law firm’s connections and legal reports, we found out that it was managing contracts for Alcatel, the massive French telecommunications company. Later it was proved that the law firm paid most of the bribes to public officials in order to get mobile contracts for Alcatel from the then-public monopoly of the telecommunications company, ICE. The officials who got payments included Costa Rica’s former president Miguel Angel Rodríguez.

What was the crucial breakthrough for you in reporting the Finnish Project and Alcatel stories? What approach did you use to get that information?

The investigation took us about a year and during that time there were many breakthroughs and revelations. For me, there were two particularly crucial moments: when we found a legal document that linked an employee of the Finnish company, Corporación Fischel, with the purchase of a house for Eliseo Vargas (the president of the Costa Rican Public Health Insitute). The other one we discovered searching on the internet. It showed that Corporacion Fischel’s President, Walter Reiche Fischel, was the president of the Panamanian company that paid for the house.

What are the key lessons you learned from your work on the Finnish Project and Alcatel investigations?

KNOW HER ANSWER AND READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON THE ICIJ WEBSITE

 

Covering the extractive industries

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ON TODAY’S JOURNALIST’S TOOBLOX, we are reprinting this article from the Global Investigative Journalism Network website

THE EXTRACTIVE industries –the development and exploitation of oil, gas, and mining resources — is a critical topic for investigative journalists, particularly in developing countries. Revenues from natural resource extraction contribute substantially to GDP and in many cases make up the bulk of government revenue. The companies in the extractive sector are large and influential. How the revenues they generate are spent affects economic growth, the environment, domestic security, and social well-being. In many countries, however, revenues are wasted or lost due to corruption and financial mismanagement.

INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY

ABANDONED MINE | This is the mill site of the Maricalum Mining Corporation, once one of Asia’s largest copper mines. It is located in the province of Negros Occidental, Philippines | Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

This guide to covering extractive industries is reprinted from the academic paper“Covering the Extractives Industry: Big Data, New Tools, and Journalism,” byAnya Schiffrin and Erika Rodrigues. Their paper was presented during the professors track at the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in October 2013 in Rio De Janeiro. There is a great deal of scope for journalists to do investigative reporting on the extractive sector. The last few years have seen a general trend towards transparency in the sector, so there is now far more data available than ever before. Indeed, the challenge will be for journalists to find the data and figure out how to make sense of it so it can be used for reporting in depth stories. Below, you can find a road map to improve your coverage, including new tools that enable journalists and bloggers to obtain and verify information, and where to get ideas for future stories.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON THE GIJN WEBSITE

 

VIDEO SHORT: Makeshift lives

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By Julius D. Mariveles

BESIDE BUNKHOUSE B1 are the ruins of an old church. Beside the ruins is a cemetery where the dead have long been resting, unmoved for decades, remembered every first of November.

Bunkhouse B1 is beside the highway and close to the sea in the town of Hernani, Eastern Samar province.

Some survivors here are doubting if anyone still remembers them, wondering when they would be finally moved from this temporary shelter so they can continue rebuilding their lives.

This coastal town of more than 8,000 residents is one of the areas hardest hit by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda in the Philippines). Ten months after the storm, survivors still live in bunkhouses, still facing the same problems of homelessness, joblessness, lack of food, and facilities that would ease the hardships of their lives. They were already poor to begin with, the storm made their lives harder.

“The legal rights of thousands of people to be informed and consulted are not being met,” it added. And, if the more than 200,000 typhoon survivors would not be given a chance to voice their needs and take part in the planning, relocation efforts are “likely to fail and push survivors deeper into poverty,” the Oxfam report said.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE

The international relief agency Oxfam, in a report released last May 2014 or six months after Yolanda struck, had already warned that poverty might increase in Eastern Visayas if the government fails to address several concerns over the relocation of victims of the super typhoon.

In its report titled The Right Move? Ensuring durable relocation after Haiyan, Oxfam noted that government plans have ignored “key elements” of sustainable relocation processes, and also lack technical guidance and support.

This is a quick look at the lives of survivors who continue to survive and live their lives the best they could in Hernani.

VIDEO SHORT: Makeshift lives

Julius Mariveles Leave a comment

By Julius D. Mariveles

BESIDE BUNKHOUSE B1 are the ruins of an old church. Beside the ruins is a cemetery where the dead have long been resting, unmoved for decades, remembered every first of November.

Bunkhouse B1 is beside the highway and close to the sea in the town of Hernani, Eastern Samar province.

Some survivors here are doubting if anyone still remembers them, wondering when they would be finally moved from this temporary shelter so they can continue rebuilding their lives.

This coastal town of more than 8,000 residents is one of the areas hardest hit by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda in the Philippines). Ten months after the storm, survivors still live in bunkhouses, still facing the same problems of homelessness, joblessness, lack of food, and facilities that would ease the hardships of their lives. They were already poor to begin with, the storm made their lives harder.

“The legal rights of thousands of people to be informed and consulted are not being met,” it added. And, if the more than 200,000 typhoon survivors would not be given a chance to voice their needs and take part in the planning, relocation efforts are “likely to fail and push survivors deeper into poverty,” the Oxfam report said.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE

The international relief agency Oxfam, in a report released last May 2014 or six months after Yolanda struck, had already warned that poverty might increase in Eastern Visayas if the government fails to address several concerns over the relocation of victims of the super typhoon.

In its report titled The Right Move? Ensuring durable relocation after Haiyan, Oxfam noted that government plans have ignored “key elements” of sustainable relocation processes, and also lack technical guidance and support.

This is a quick look at the lives of survivors who continue to survive and live their lives the best they could in Hernani.

VIDEO SHORT: Makeshift lives

Julius Mariveles Leave a comment

By Julius D. Mariveles

BESIDE BUNKHOUSE B1 are the ruins of an old church. Beside the ruins is a cemetery where the dead have long been resting, unmoved for decades, remembered every first of November.

Bunkhouse B1 is beside the highway and close to the sea in the town of Hernani, Eastern Samar province.

Some survivors here are doubting if anyone still remembers them, wondering when they would be finally moved from this temporary shelter so they can continue rebuilding their lives.

This coastal town of more than 8,000 residents is one of the areas hardest hit by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda in the Philippines). Ten months after the storm, survivors still live in bunkhouses, still facing the same problems of homelessness, joblessness, lack of food, and facilities that would ease the hardships of their lives. They were already poor to begin with, the storm made their lives harder.

“The legal rights of thousands of people to be informed and consulted are not being met,” it added. And, if the more than 200,000 typhoon survivors would not be given a chance to voice their needs and take part in the planning, relocation efforts are “likely to fail and push survivors deeper into poverty,” the Oxfam report said.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE

The international relief agency Oxfam, in a report released last May 2014 or six months after Yolanda struck, had already warned that poverty might increase in Eastern Visayas if the government fails to address several concerns over the relocation of victims of the super typhoon.

In its report titled The Right Move? Ensuring durable relocation after Haiyan, Oxfam noted that government plans have ignored “key elements” of sustainable relocation processes, and also lack technical guidance and support.

This is a quick look at the lives of survivors who continue to survive and live their lives the best they could in Hernani.