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01 / Terminal Investigation
The bug in the system
was always human.
Keynote spectacles. Algorithmic monopolies. The surveillance apparatus operating in the background. Explore the verified scandals, anti-competitive pacts, labor abuses, and engineering disasters behind the technology industry.
02 / Daily Briefing
Synchronized UTC selection.
Rotates daily across the archive.
03 / The Archive
482 stories indexed
Filter by sector or keyword.
Fraud & Cover-Ups2010s
Areva, EDF, CGNPC, and Maureen Kearney
Maureen Kearney, the CFDT secretary of Areva’s European group committee, alerted French politicians and journalists in 2011–2012 to a confidential arrangement involving EDF, Areva and China’s CGNPC. The proposed cooperation included nuclear-technology transfers that could have benefited Chinese reactor projects. Areva initially denied the contract’s existence, while French reporting later published excerpts of a draft agreement on 27 September 2012; Le Canard enchaîné subsequently reported an October 2012 State Holdings Agency note on the issue. Economics Minister Arnaud Montebourg commissioned a General Inspectorate of Finance investigation in December 2012, and negotiations reportedly continued without Areva despite a 2011 policy requiring EDF to work with Areva on such projects. Kearney reported escalating threats before being attacked at her home on 17 December 2012. She was found bound and injured, and investigators later focused on her after she confessed during police custody to fabricating the assault, a confession she said resulted from threats against her family. She was convicted in 2017 and received five months’ probation plus a €5,000 fine, but an appeals court acquitted her in 2018 and criticized investigative failures. The attack was never solved. The episode became a major French whistleblower case, illustrating the risks of challenging opaque state-backed industrial deals, although the source does not establish who ordered the assault or whether the technology-transfer allegations were ultimately proven.
Fraud & Cover-Ups2010s
Memari News; Yashar Soltani
In September 2016, Yashar Soltani, managing director and editor-in-chief of the Iranian architecture and municipal-affairs website Memari News, was arrested after publishing a set of declassified reports concerning controversial transfers of Tehran Municipality-owned properties to multiple individuals. The source identifies the reports as involving Iran’s General Inspection Office, but does not provide the properties’ value, the recipients’ identities, or a final legal finding that the transfers constituted fraud. Soltani was released in November 2016. The episode illustrates the vulnerability of digital investigative journalism when reporting on alleged misconduct by powerful public institutions: publication of documentary material was followed by detention rather than a transparent public accounting of the transactions. No executive was named, and the supplied source does not describe charges, a trial outcome, or subsequent regulatory reforms. Soltani later ran in Tehran’s 2017 local elections, placing 43rd with 256,424 votes and failing to win a council seat.
Labor & Exploitation2000s–2020s
Nestlé; Yasmine Motarjemi
Yasmine Motarjemi, a food-safety specialist who had worked at the World Health Organization, joined Nestlé’s headquarters in Vevey in 2000 as corporate food-safety manager and assistant vice-president. After a 2003 parental complaint, she sought the withdrawal of baby biscuits and, from 2006, pressed for an audit into the toxicity of baby products. The source does not establish that Nestlé manufactured the melamine-contaminated milk implicated in China’s 2009 food-poisoning crisis, but it says that crisis affected 300,000 babies and killed 13 children. The director associated with the offending products was subsequently promoted and became Motarjemi’s manager. According to the account, the manager removed Motarjemi’s responsibilities and assigned her menial work; Nestlé fired her in 2010. She filed a complaint in March 2011 with the court of the canton of Vaud, alleging moral and psychological harassment. On January 7, 2020, the civil court of appeal recognized the grounds for harassment and said she had been intimidated in an “insidious manner.” In 2023, Nestlé withdrew its appeal and paid 2 million Swiss francs, 100,000 francs in legal costs, and one symbolic franc in moral damages. Motarjemi received the GUE/NGL whistleblower award in 2019 and was nominated for Switzerland’s Prix Courage in 2020.
Platform Scandals2010s–2020s
Telegram; Amadnews; Ruhollah Zam
Ruhollah Zam, an Iranian journalist living in France, founded the Telegram channel Amadnews in 2015. The channel attracted about 1.4 million followers and published anti-government reporting, protest schedules, organizational details, and allegations concerning Iranian officials during the 2017–2018 protests. After Iranian authorities complained that Amadnews provided instructions for making gasoline bombs, Telegram shut the channel in 2018; a successor channel later appeared under another name. The episode showed how a widely used communications platform could become both a tool for political mobilization and a target of state pressure. On 14 October 2019, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it had lured Zam back to Iran and arrested him, although other accounts said Iraqi intelligence detained and transferred him under a 2011 extradition agreement. On 30 June 2020, an Iranian court sentenced him to death for “corruption on earth,” a charge officials linked to his online activity and alleged role in the protests. Zam was hanged on 12 December 2020. France, Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, and the International Bar Association condemned the execution; later Iranian claims that France helped arrange his capture remain contested and unverified.
Fraud & Cover-Ups2000s–2010s
Burning Brain Society; electronic cigarettes; tobacco advertising
Hemant Goswami, an Indian tobacco-control activist and founder of the Burning Brain Society, used public-interest litigation and nearly 300 Right to Information applications to challenge tobacco promotion and weak enforcement. The source reports that he documented tobacco-company donations to political parties, challenged the use of cigarette-brand names in surrogate promotions, and filed complaints over smoking in public places. Bollywood actors Sanjay Dutt, Salman Khan, and Ajay Devgan were reportedly prosecuted and fined after complaints concerning public smoking. His campaign contributed to Chandigarh’s smoke-free initiative, later documented in the 2011 film *Change Catalyst* and cited by the World Health Organization as a model for smoke-free cities. Goswami’s longest legal campaign began with Public Interest Writ Petition CWP 14597 of 2007 in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, arguing that nicotine and nicotine-delivery devices should be treated as dangerous substances. In 2012, the court reportedly held that nicotine and its delivery devices were poisons and directed state monitoring; Punjab, Haryana, and Chandigarh subsequently added nicotine to their poison lists. A government expert committee formed in 2013, including Goswami and WHO officials, recommended a comprehensive prohibition in 2017. India enacted the Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes Act in December 2019, banning their production, import, sale, distribution, storage, and advertising. The account attributes this regulatory outcome to Goswami’s litigation and advocacy, while the supplied source does not provide independent court or government records for each claim.
Fraud & Cover-Ups2007–2016
Shahrzad Mirgholikhan; Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB); Press TV
The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida convicted Iranian whistleblower Shahrzad Mirgholikhan of attempting to import night-vision goggles to Iran. She was imprisoned in the United States from 2007 to 2012, placing a military- and surveillance-related technology transaction at the center of a criminal export case. The supplied account does not identify the goggles’ value, the precise conviction date, or additional defendants, so those details cannot be established here. After her release, Mirgholikhan returned to Iran and joined state broadcaster IRIB. Under Press TV head Mohammad Sarafraz, she became director of international relations and, after Sarafraz became IRIB director-general in 2014, was appointed the broadcaster’s special inspector. Al-Monitor reported that she investigated waste and corruption across the organization and clashed with Abdulali Ali-Asgari, then IRIB’s deputy director for technical affairs. In 2016, she left Iran after being charged with espionage by the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and later resided in Oman. The supplied source does not establish whether the espionage allegation resulted in a conviction.
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