Thread by @WillFitzgibbon

1/ When @ICIJorg started the #FinCENFiles investigation 1 year ago, I thought I’d do what I usually do – work with great partners in places like Liberia, Turkmenistan, beyond. Then Covid19 happened.

But collaboration means we could do our work despite a global lockdown.

2/ I found myself reporting from North Carolina about a family devastated by fentanyl, a deadly opioid, and the financial circuit it had taken from China to the Tar Heel State.

icij.org/investigations…

3/ The story started with just one line in an Excel spreadsheet. From there, @ICIJorg and others pieced together the story through court documents, interviews, media reports.

4/ It ended with me last month in Garland, North Carolina, looking at photos of Joseph Williams and talking with his family who kindly and generously received me and endured my questions. “If telling his story helps one other person” it will be worth it, they said.

5/ It’s an example of how dirty money flows, often enabled by banks or other financial institutions, hurt people. This IS NOT just “another story” about how bad and rich people move money (although @delreuter found a lot of them)

icij.org/investigations…

6/ We found many cases of a wild, untamed financial system hurting people. Banks often just didn’t know who they were helping move money. This is our story that tells you about these people who have suffered – and why it matters.

icij.org/investigations…

7/ In Tunisia, @inkyfada spoke to an Olympic athlete who lost out on a gold medal to a drug cheat enabled by corruption and dirty money sent around the world at the highest levels.

inkyfada.com/fr/2020/09/20/…

8/ We worked with @RFERL’s Turkmen service for the first time to interview families in Mary, Turkmenistan, who remember how they went hungry in 2016 – the same year the despotic government there paid a Scottish shell company $1.6 million for…”confectionery”!!

9/ And @KyivPost reporters in Ukraine worked with us and spoke to the family of a mine worker crushed to death under aging equipment just months before Deutsche Bank started wondering who was involved in suspicious bank transfers.

10/ This story carries my name on top but, like all @ICIJorg stories, is the result of many greater minds, including editors @michaelwhudson @ben_hallman @FergusShiel. And look at all these wonderful contributors who truly define what it is to be a great collaborator!