2016 was quite a year with a range of exciting wins as well as some significant setbacks in the global context. Our work on the corrupt sale of a hugely valuable Nigerian oil exploration licence to Shell and Eni was classic Global Witness: high energy, high stakes, dogged pursuit of facts, and great collaboration with partners. This led to the freezing of funds and the launch and continuation of formal investigations and legal proceedings in Italy and the Netherlands.

Following our high profile exposés of how the London property market was being used to launder dirty money, then UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced that anonymous companies would have to reveal the names of their ultimate owners. There are now 16 countries moving towards having public registers of beneficial ownership thanks to our flagship campaign and our determined work with allies.

Since 2013, Global Witness has campaigned for the EU to act to prevent the trade in minerals from fuelling or funding conflict. Finally in 2016 we secured landmark legislation that will require companies importing raw minerals into Europe to ensure they are not directly or indirectly financing conflict or human right abuses.

In July 2016, the new Myanmar government announced that no jade licences would be extended, and no new licences would be awarded, until a revised legal framework is in place. They also committed to an environmental assessment of the jade mines. This followed a groundbreaking report and concerted advocacy by Global Witness to prevent the $31 billion jade industry from benefiting few except a small handful of crooks and cronies.

In September 2016, New York hedge fund Och-Ziff, was ordered to pay $413m by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). This is one of the biggest fines ever handed out for violating the FCPA, and follows many years of advocacy by Global Witness on secretive mining deals in DRC.

Even as we celebrate our many successes in changing laws and ensuring accountability for wrongdoing, we are concerned about a range of worrying global dynamics. The UK’s decision to leave the EU in the Brexit vote risks profoundly weakening UK efforts core to our mission at Global Witness: to protect human rights and tackle corruption, environmental destruction and climate change.

So much of the progress we have made over the past 15 years has relied on the power of collective action within the European Union. Our ability to stop developing countries being robbed of their natural resources and to create a just, sustainable world depends on international and regional collaboration.

The Brexit vote is also part and parcel of a deeply worrying global trend, as reflected in President Trump’s election and around the world, towards a more xenophobic, inward-looking, and fear-based mentality. Now more than ever, the many people who care passionately about the planet and the people that live on it must stand together and demand positive change.

Global Witness uses a range of different investigative techniques and skills to help us expose the truth. Our very first investigation into illegal logging involved counting logging trucks crossing the border from Cambodia into Thailand. Twenty years on, physical techniques like this are complemented by more high-tech tactics, such as the use of drones and satellite imagery analysis. Whatever the technique, we are known for our meticulous attention to detail and our rigorous accumulation of evidence. For this reason, our reports can be months or even years in the making - but in the end frequently help us deliver system-changing results.

Detailed and painstaking analysis of financial records and other documentation, to find the facts that will help us build our case.

When investigating the corrupt deal for Nigerian oil block OPL 245, we analysed thousands of legal documents to establish Shell and Eni’s involvement. Our report led to Shell’s headquarters being raided by law enforcement officials in 2016 and money laundering charges being filed against Nigerian public officials.

Using computer programming to extract pertinent information from vast swathes of online data, and produce datasets that can be searched and interrogated to reveal stories.

See 'Corruption and Money Laundering: Using Web Scraping to Inform Investigations', for an explanation of how we used this technique to create our Cambodia Corporates database in 2016.

Much of what we do starts with brave whistleblowers or undercover sources taking risks to share confidential information with us. We rely on these anonymous informants to tip us off on stories and build the evidence base for our policy-changing exposés. We are always vigilant in protecting their identities to keep them safe.

Both our Hostile Takeover report, which revealed how the Cambodian Prime Minister’s family has secret stakes in the country’s major industries, and our River of Gold report exposing the link between mining and conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, started with tip-offs from anonymous sources.

Partnering with local civil society organisations (CSOs) to gain invaluable access to local knowledge and networks, and then campaigning alongside them to drive change at the national and international level.

In our environmental defenders work, we collaborated closely with local partners in countries like Brazil, Colombia and Honduras to verify cases to include in our annual report On Dangerous Ground in 2016. In turn, local organisations in several countries have used data from On Dangerous Ground to push for further investigations and prosecutions.

Using hidden cameras and recording devices to expose corruption and money laundering, and to find out what’s truly going on behind closed doors.

 See 'Corruption and Money Laundering: Undercover Investigations' for an explanation of how we used this technique in 2016, going undercover in New York City law firms to expose how suspect funds from abroad could be laundered in the US using anonymous companies.

Using drones, satellite imagery analysis, and GPS tracking devices attached to individual logs to get evidence of illegal and environmentally irresponsible activities. These technologies complement our on-the-ground research and can reveal information that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to get.

See 'Forest, Land and Climate: Using drones and other technologies', for an explanation of how we used drones in 2016 to expose illegal logging in Papua New Guinea.

From our early days investigating the trade in illegal timber funding Cambodia’s genocidal Khmer Rouge, being a physical presence in the countries we research - for example, counting logging trucks going across borders and through checkpoints - has always been central to what Global Witness does.

This is still central to what we do. In 2016, investigators in Liberia visited religious sites destroyed by a rapidly expanding oil palm plantation and interviewed community members resulting in our October brief Temples and Guns.

Bribe payments, anonymous companies, inadequate anti-money laundering checks, and global mobility are all opportunities that enable corrupt elites to launder money and enjoy luxury lifestyles overseas, completely under the radar.

Global Witness is campaigning to change the system that facilitates this greed and corruption on a global scale. We want to stop criminals, corrupt officials and crooked corporations from hiding their money and dodging taxes at the expense of ordinary citizens in developing countries and around the world.

In January 2016, CBS 60 Minutes broadcast an undercover Global Witness investigation showing how suspect funds from abroad could be laundered in the US, using anonymous companies. Our daring work with hidden cameras exposed the role potentially played by US lawyers and law firms in facilitating the flow of dodgy money. (See How We Work ).

The show was broadcast to over 9.4m viewers and was the 9th most watched programme in America that week. It was re-broadcast several months later and international press including The New York Times and The Guardian also picked up the story.

Following the broadcast, the New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, said that the investigation “highlights the important issue of the use of anonymous corporate vehicles in the United States to hide and potentially launder foreign assets.”

Just days afterwards, a bipartisan group of US Representatives and Senators introduced new legislation to Congress. If it is passed, the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Act will require companies formed in the US to disclose their ultimate owners when the company is incorporated.

An historic new initiative to prevent corrupt money flowing through UK banks came into effect in March 2016, following years of campaigning by Global Witness and our allies. The new Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) rules mean that UK banks will have to name a senior manager as personally responsible for ensuring that the bank does not handle the proceeds of crime, including corruption.

This is something Global Witness has long campaigned for. Allies in Parliament have confirmed that without pressure from us, the responsibility for Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance would not have been included in the final rules.

In April, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ (ICIJ) leak of over 11 million documents - the Panama Papers - from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca dramatically demonstrated how offshore tax havens can be used to facilitate corruption, criminality and tax evasion. We responded rapidly to the leaks, drawing on our investigation and campaigning experience to explain the systemic problems that allow this to happen.

A month later, we used the platform of the UK’s Anti-Corruption Summit to continue our high profile campaign against anonymous companies using the UK property market to launder dirty money.

At the Summit, the UK government announced new legislation that will require any foreign company that currently owns property in the UK or that purchases property in the future to declare its beneficial owner. The legislation was informed by our recommendations, and with over £170 billion of UK property currently owned by foreign companies, represents a huge win.

In July, the UK published the world’s first fully open register of beneficial ownership, disclosing the real owners of all companies incorporated in the UK. These kinds of public registries are something Global Witness has been advocating for years. Now law enforcement, businesses, NGOs and citizens will be able to find out who they’re really dealing with.

Over the second half of the year Global Witness worked with DataKind and OpenCorporates to investigate the new data and expose teething problems, such as the use of free-text fields for nationality and date of birth, which created some anomalies in the data.

We also took our campaign to the US, highlighting in a report and follow up briefings how anonymous companies pose a major risk to investors who might unwittingly back illegal or corrupt activities. We coordinated a letter to US Congress from a group of investors, who between them manage over $740 billion in assets, calling for greater transparency around beneficial ownership.

Thanks to our campaigning over the last eight years, 16 countries are now moving towards having public registers of the ultimate, beneficial, owners of companies.

In 2017, we’ll be pressing the EU to establish public registries for company ownership, while working to ensure the UK registry is robust and sets a global standard. We’ll also continue to build the case for ending anonymous companies in the US.

In May, Global Witness published an explosive report exposing scams against investors on London’s junior stock exchange and high-level bribery in West Africa.

The Deceivers revealed how, with the help of secrecy laws in tax havens and using the services of a top London lawyer, former England cricketer Phil Edmonds and his business partner Andrew Groves crafted intricate insider deals to skim off millions of dollars of investors’ funds.

Groves and Edmonds floated a string of companies on London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM), a magnet for fraudulent and corrupt companies due to its lax system of self-regulation.

As a result of our investigations, Edmonds and Groves’ company Sable Mining was forced to delist from AIM. It also led to indictments in Liberia of the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, the former Mining Minister and the lawyer who helped Sable bribe officials. The trial is now under way in Liberia and is anticipated to conclude in autumn 2017.

Despite mounting evidence, so far the AIM has refused to acknowledge any problems. In 2017 Global Witness will seek to end that complacency and press the government to launch an independent enquiry.

Minerals and metals like gold, tin, and jade are used in hundreds of products central to modern life, from jet engines to mobile phones. The raw resources are often mined in developing countries, where they should create jobs and reduce inequality, but frequently the mine workers and local communities see no benefit.

Instead, armed groups and corrupt government officials vie for control of the lucrative trade, which both incentivises and funds continued conflict. Unscrupulous businesses willing to turn a blind eye to violence reap huge profits, while populations suffer and development stagnates.

For over two decades, Global Witness has been at the forefront of efforts to persuade governments and businesses to make mineral supply chains fair and transparent.

Since 2013, Global Witness has campaigned for the EU to act to prevent the trade in minerals from fuelling or funding conflict. As a result, in 2016 landmark legislation was passed that will, for the first time, require companies importing raw minerals into Europe to ensure they are not directly or indirectly financing conflict or human right abuses.

Global Witness led a coalition of civil society organisations whose input, scrutiny and public campaigning significantly strengthened the final law. However, a number of corporations and their political allies are now attempting to push back. In 2017, we’ll be defending the progress we made, while continuing to expose the cost of conflicts bankrolled by the illegal trade in minerals.

Global Witness has worked for over a decade to expose the conflict mineral trade in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where workers often risk their lives digging by hand in dangerous makeshift mines.

In July 2016, we published an investigation into a gold boom in South Kivu, revealing how armed groups received cash and weapons from a private Chinese mining company and made up to $25,000 per month extorting local miners. In just one year, up to $17 million worth of gold from one territory went missing, likely smuggled out of Congo onto international markets.

Following the report launch, Congo’s Minister of Mines called for a “thorough clean up” of the gold sector and dispatched an official investigation team to verify the report’s findings. This led to the detention in Kinshasa of four individuals Global Witness had written about in our report.

At the end of November 2016, the three Congolese officials who had been detained were released and await possible disciplinary action. A French citizen, Franck Menard, returned to France without charge.

In 2017 we will continue to work with local and international civil society partners and others to ensure those involved are held accountable.

Our work exposing the involvement of international actors in corruption in the DRC continued to make waves in 2016. We published a report detailing how Britain’s Overseas Territories helped facilitate six secretive mining and oil deals that lost Congo $1.5 billion.

Following these revelations, the UK’s Serious Fraud Office was given blockbuster funding to further investigate the deals (which Global Witness first wrote about in 2012), with a specific focus on the involvement of Israeli businessman Dan Gertler.

The US government also fined hedge fund Och Ziff $413m, partly in relation to its role in financing deals with Gertler. Documents published alongside the fine confirmed much of what we suspected about top DRC state officials receiving multi-million dollar payments from mining deals in the DRC.

We also broke a story in 2016 showing how the London-listed mining giant Glencore had secretly agreed with the state mining company to send mine royalty payments, which that company was due to receive, to Gertler instead.

The stakes are high in Congo. Elections were controversially postponed amidst widespread protest in 2016. The deal to hold them this year is falling apart. There is a clear risk that corruption in the mining sector could distort the democratic process, prevent a peaceful transition of power, and lead to further violence and bloodshed.

Following a two-year investigation into Afghanistan’s lapis lazuli mines, we launched our War in the Treasury of the People report in June 2016. The report exposed a whole range of abuses, including the funding of armed groups such as the Taliban through illegal mining, and the use of highly irregular contracts.

We uncovered the involvement of senior political figures in the trade, and generated substantial media interest and discussion. Following the launch, a spokesman for the Ministry of Mines said: “We commit ourselves to preventing illegal mining in Afghanistan and taking action against those involved.”

The same spokesperson reported that the National Security Council had asked the police, intelligence services and military to present a strategy on preventing the Taliban’s access to mineral deposits. We also believe that our work prevented the leader of an illegal armed group from being appointed by the government as the head of the mining protection force at the lapis mines.

In 2017, we will continue to explore the links between minerals and conflict in Afghanistan and promote reforms to Afghan mining laws.

Global Witness’ groundbreaking 2015 report, Jade: Myanmar’s “Big State Secret”, exposed a corrupt industry worth up to US $31 billion a year, controlled by the most notorious names from the military junta era.

Building on this report, and its spin-off, Lords of Jade, we worked with our partners in 2016 to develop detailed recommendations for reform of the industry for the new civilian-led government.

As a result of our advocacy, in July the government suspended jade and gemstone licensing until a new legal framework could be put in place. They also committed to undertake an environmental assessment of jade mines.

Global Witness will be pushing for these reforms to move forward in 2017. With conflict escalating in Myanmar it is more urgent than ever to get the military out of the jade trade.

Increasing demands for food, timber, cash crops such as rubber, palm oil and other commodities are putting huge pressure on forests, land and the climate. But regulations governing land rights are largely non-existent while those governing logging operations are rarely enforced.

Meanwhile illegal logging continues apace and fossil fuel companies continue to do deals with governments that impede the urgent action needed to curb global warming. Global Witness is fighting to protect the environment and the rights of people whose land and livelihoods are being stolen.

In March 2016, the status of Honduras as the most dangerous country for environmental defenders was reaffirmed with the brutal murder of Berta Cáceres. Cáceres was killed because of her opposition to a dam set to impact upon her community’s water sources and sacred indigenous land.

Global Witness joined the global community in a call for an immediate investigation into Cáceres’ murder. This resulted in the arrest of several suspects – an unusual occurrence in a country with such high rates of impunity. Global Witness continues to push for those who ordered her murder to be held to account.

We also contributed to a groundbreaking report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the protection of environmental activists. The report, which highlighted the risks to defenders and the range of players involved, was presented to the UN General Assembly.

In 2017 we will partner with NGOs and media outlets to increase international focus on this issue and lobby governments, businesses and investors to put better protections in place.

In 2016 we achieved significant progress in our 4-year campaign to bring a halt to Japan’s trade in illegal timber. Half of Japan’s massive plywood imports come from the Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, where illegal logging is widespread and major logging companies are destroying virgin rainforests and the livelihoods of indigenous communities.

Global Witness worked closely with Japanese civil society to draw attention to the links between the booming Japanese construction industry and illegal logging in Malaysia, and warned that this could undermine the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Organising Committee’s aim to put on a “sustainable and minimal impact” games.¹

In April, ahead of the G7 hosted by Japan, we published a report showing that Japan was the only G7 country that still did not have a law prohibiting the import of illegal timber, and that the country’s seven major timber importers were all still sourcing from Sarawak.

In response to this sustained pressure from civil society, the Japanese government included illegal logging on the agenda of the G7 Summit, and passed a new law meant to reduce Japan’s trade in illegal timber. However, the legislation stops well short of what is required. We publicised its shortcomings and will continue to press for improvements in 2017.

In mid 2016, in a major step forward for the campaign, the organisers of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics committed to use legally and sustainably sourced timber, while several major Japanese companies took concrete steps to improve their sourcing.

In 2016, thanks in part to our campaigning and high level lobbying, the moratorium on the allocation of new logging concessions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remained in place and the government agreed to cancel all illegally-allocated concessions.

We kept our online DRC interactive timber tracker up to date, mapping illegal or high risk timber exports from DRC onto international markets - a very useful resource for campaigners, industry and regulators.

In 2016 there were further crackdowns on civil society in the DRC, including the politically motivated expulsion of two Global Witness staff investigating logging companies’ treatment of affected communities. This reaffirmed our commitment to exposing the threats to DRC’s forests and defending the rights of customary landowners who depend upon them for their livelihoods.