"Africa, capital flight and the bankers who help: evidence from the FinCEN files" a panel discussion with William Fitzgibbon, Augustin Armendariz, Taiwo Hassan Adebayo and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira

Past Event

Date
 09 November 2020, 1:00pm - 2:00pm

Location
 Online

Event Recording:

The FinCEN Files investigation, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, exposed more than $2 trillion in suspicious deals.

Criminals, politicians and others sent money through the world's major banks, which initially ignored red flags or reported the money as potentially dirty after weeks, months or years of delay. Billions of dollars in suspicious deals moved from Africa into Europe, the United States, the Middle East and secretive tax havens, including payments to and from politicians and family members, state-owned oil and gas companies, arms companies and many others.

Join William Fitzgibbon and Augustin Armendariz, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and Taiwo Hassan Adebayo, Premium Times Nigeria, as they discuss with Professor Ricardo Soares de Oliveira what the FinCEN Files investigation has uncovered and the implications.

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Agustin Armendariz
Senior Data Reporter, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Agustin Armendariz, United States, is ICIJ's Senior Data Reporter.

Prior to joining ICIJ Agustin was a reporter at The New York Times, contributing data analysis to investigative stories and the daily report. He's also worked for the Center for Investigative Reporting, San Diego Union-Tribune and the Center for Public Integrity.

Agustin has contributed to projects that won the Investigative Reporting and Editors (IRE) Gannett Award for Innovation, the Investigative Reporters and Editors medal, the George Foster Peabody award, the Scripps Howard public service award, the George Polk Award and the Casey Medal.

A native of Austin, Texas, he received a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of New Mexico and a master’s degree in journalism from American University. Most folks know Agustin by his nickname Augie.

Taiwo Hassan Adebayo

Taiwo Hassan Adebayo
Senior Investigative Reporter, Premium Times Nigeria

Taiwo Hassan Adebayo isa Senior Investigative Reporter for the Premium Times Nigeria. He has a diverse background, with local and international experiences, in journalism, development and research.

He was educated up to Master's level in Development and has many years of High-level engagements with public, corporate, non-governmental and multilateral stakeholders as well as grassroots-level work across communities in 35 of Nigeria's states on varying interests, including financial and procurement corruption; business and corporate sustainability; politics and governance; human rights; environment, agriculture, energy, resource extraction and climate change; conflict, violence and humanitarian emergency; and infrastructure.

He was involved in a UK-funded international development research on the humanitarian crisis and livelihood recovery in the Lake Chad region, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists cross-border collaborative investigations, and editorial supervision of Dutch Free Press-funded project on conflict and humanitarian reporting, and UK DFID project on natural resources and oil sector in Nigeria.

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Will Fitzgibbon
Senior Reporter, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Will Fitzgibbon is a senior ICIJ reporter. He is also ICIJ's Africa and Middle East partnership coordinator.

Will joined ICIJ in 2014 and coordinated the Fatal Extraction investigation that examined the impact of Australian mining companies in Africa. It remains one of the largest pan-African collaborations of journalists. Will has reported on ICIJ projects, including West Africa Leaks, Paradise Papers and Panama Papers. He coordinates ICIJ's partnerships with journalists in Africa and the Middle East.

Before coming to Washington, he worked at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) in London where his work on politics, the finance industry and housing appeared in The Guardian and The Observer. He studied at the London School of Economics, Sciences-Po Paris and The Australian National University.

Ricardo Soares De Oliveira

Professor Ricardo Soares de Oliveira
Lead Reseacher, Oxford Martin Programme on African Governance

Ricardo Soares de Oliveira is Professor of the International Politics of Africa at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, Official Fellow of St Peter's College, and a Fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin.

His research interests include African politics (particularly West and Central Africa), the geopolitics of energy and international political economy, especially in the fields of natural resource extraction, state decay and post-conflict reconstruction.

He is the author of Oil and Politics in the Gulf of Guinea (2007), co-editor of China Returns to Africa: A Rising Power and a Continent Embrace (with Chris Alden and Daniel Large, 2008) and The New Protectorates: International Tutelage and the Making of Liberal States (with James Mayall, 2011). His latest book is Magnificent and Beggar Land: Angola Since the Civil War (2015). Soares de Oliveira has worked in the field of governance and the extractive industries for the World Bank, the European Commission, Catholic Relief Services, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), Oxfam, and the French Ministry of Defence, among others.