A new collaboration from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and media partners in Latin America, Europe and the United States documented nearly 19,000 migrants’ journeys to the U.S. border under dangerous conditions. The investigation “Cargo trucks: a trap for migrants,” led by Noticias Telemundo and the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP) found that the illegal use of cargo trucks to smuggle people across Mexico is on the rise, as are accidents and deaths involving migrants and trucks. This is happening as the Mexican government, pressured by the U ..read more

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has responded to an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and its media partners that documented nearly 19,000 migrants’ journeys to the U.S. border under dangerous conditions. López Obrador, speaking in Spanish, described the smuggling of migrants through Mexico in cargo trucks as “very unfortunate,” but avoided questions about whether his government should bear responsibility for it during a lengthy press conference on Thursday morning. “You should help us convince the United States authorities that we must ad ..read more

Governments worldwide are failing to protect — and frequently cracking down on —  independent media in 2024, casting a shadow over Reporters Without Borders’ annual press freedom rankings in a major global election year. The nonprofit, known as RSF, which advocates for journalists and media workers, publishes the World Press Freedom Index to mark World Press Freedom Day. The index scores countries and territories based on five indicators: political support and respect, security, economic constraints, legislative environments, and sociocultural factors. Of the five, the political indicator ..read more

Thousands of migrants board trucks in Mexico each year in the hope of reaching the U.S. border and building a new life. Some of those journeys end in tragedy. A cross-border team of investigative journalists in Latin America, Europe and the United States collaborated for seven months on a database that gives a glimpse into the dangerous and deadly smuggling trade. Data journalists reviewed public records, news coverage and reports by an advocacy group to create the database documenting nearly 19,000 migrants’ journeys through Mexico. This attempt by reporters to map events across six years and ..read more

Six days before Rafelín Martínez Castillo was sent flying from a trailer truck transporting him and 168 other migrants across Mexico, he was sanding wood in his cousin’s modest workshop in the Dominican Republic. The 31-year-old craftsman, his brother and cousin were working tirelessly to fulfill a large order of pilones, the popular mortar and pestle sets sold in souvenir stores and on roadsides in the Caribbean nation. “When I touched his hands the day we said goodbye, they were full of calluses and cuts from all the hours he spent sanding wood,” Martínez Castillo’s mother, Kenia Castillo, r ..read more

Following years of global tax scandals, including ICIJ’s Paradise Papers and Pandora Papers investigations, a global accountants’ ethics board has released a new set of standards for tax professionals, aimed at rebuilding public and institutional trust in the tax planning industry. The International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants, or IESBA, published an update to its ethics guidelines last week, incorporating for the first time advice that urged accountants and other tax professionals to take public interest into account when working on tax planning for clients. The new standards come ..read more

U.K. authorities froze a multimillion-dollar London townhouse linked to Igor Komarov roughly one week after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists revealed the property appeared untouched by sanctions against the high-ranking Kremlin official. In February, ICIJ showed the ongoing connection between Komarov and the townhouse on Herbert Crescent — a prime location in central London — which was purchased for more than $16.5 million in 2007 through a British Virgin Islands-based shell company he previously controlled. There was nothing illegal about the transaction as Komarov, w ..read more

Over the past decade China has forcibly repatriated more than 12,000 fugitives, as part of a state campaign to stamp out corruption, according to a new report by a human rights group. Safeguard Defenders, the Spain-based group, says that Xi Jingping’s government has relied heavily on extrajudicial methods such as kidnappings, harassment and intimidation to “persuade” and coerce Chinese nationals living in more than 120 countries to return to China. Though Beijing claims the fugitives are alleged criminal suspects, the group’s report says that China’s “deeply flawed and politicized” judicial sy ..read more

Not much happens in Bulembu these days. The little company town grew around an asbestos mine that began operations in 1939. By the 1960s, Havelock Mine was one of the world’s biggest producers of the lethal mineral, but in 2001 the mine abruptly shuttered amid a plummeting demand for asbestos. Most of Bulembu’s inhabitants left in search of work. Bulembu sits in a green valley surrounded by timber plantations in a remote part of Eswatini, a tiny southern African kingdom of 1.2 million bordered by South Africa and Mozambique. Known as Swaziland until its king unilaterally changed its name in 20 ..read more

Against a backdrop of rolling hills and sugar cane fields, a generous stretch of cleared land borders the small industrial town of Matsapha in central Eswatini, a tiny landlocked African country between South Africa and Mozambique. Musa Motsa, a 51-year-old farmworker and father of six, grew up on this land. He and his family used to grow cabbage and other crops here and collected water from a nearby spring. But in 2012, they were forcibly removed — along with around 180 other people — to make room for a government-sanctioned “special economic zone,” or SEZ, called the Royal Science and Techno ..read more