Resources

"Solitary Voices,” grounded on internal documents obtained by NBC News after a lengthy FOIA battle, reveals for the first time how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses solitary confinement in its sprawling network of immigration detention centers.

This was the biggest media investigation of money laundering during 2019. The team from SVT revealed that over 150 billion Euros from suspicious customers had been channeled through the Baltic branch of Swedbank. Some of the clients involved Paul Manafort, Victor Yanukovich, Russian oligarch Iskander Makhmudov and several other companies involved in organized crime. The stock price declined with over 10 billion dollars and the CEO and the director of the board resigned after the investigation. The story was spread all over the world as an example of how Scandinavia has been a part of the plundering of Russia.

Trafficking in counterfeit sports memorabilia. An investigation into one family’s experience reveals a much bigger problem in the sports memorabilia business. The family of recently deceased firefighter Chuck Kerr suspected that a sports memorabilia collection he built over years was possibly bogus. NBC News investigated and discovered that many signed baseballs and other items in the collection, for which he spent well over $100,000, were fake, and all were sold to him by a dealer with a big name in the business, Ralph Perullo, who gained renown in 1999 when he purchased Joe DiMaggio’s personal sports memorabilia collection from his estate.

A mysterious ailment began to affect hundreds of people, causing them to gasp for air, in the spring of 2019. They lived all over the country. Most of them were young and otherwise healthy. But in a matter of days, many became so desperately ill — unable to breathe — that droves of them began showing up in the nation’s emergency rooms. Doctors were perplexed. Antibiotics and steroids were prescribed, but the young victims languished in intensive care units from coast to coast. By summer, the medical mystery quickly turned into a full full-blown epidemic. Over 800 people had become ill and 12 had died. It would turn out that the common thread linking these patients together was vaping. The vast majority were vaping black market THC oil. THC is the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

The China Cables revealed, in the Chinese government’s own words, how secretive “re-education” camps in the far west region of Xinjiang operate, and what sort of surveillance data gets innocent Muslims sent to them.

A year-long investigation by CNN across three continents into the second largest religious order in the world, the Salesians of Don Bosco. It discovered that the order, despite being specifically set up to protect children, has a pattern of cover-up and intimidation that enabled Salesian priests and brothers to abuse children almost with impunity for decades.

CNN has investigated the businesses of Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin for more than two years, including his involvement in the St Petersburg 'troll factory' that sought to disrupt the US election campaign, and his financing of the mercenary group known as Wagner. We covered Wagner's activities in Syria - as the Kremlin's cheap 'auxiliary' force - and in eastern Ukraine. And we investigated the - as yet - unsolved murder of three Russian journalists in the Central African Republic as they delved into the activities of Russian mercenaries.

Child labor in Madagascar supports and propels an international mica industry reliant on the work of some of the world’s most vulnerable, poor, and isolated people. NBC News’ investigation revealed thousands of children mine, sort, and split mica in Madagascar, which supplies overwhelming demand from China, where over 90 percent of the country’s mica ends up. Once in China, mica becomes a key element of finished electronic parts like batteries, capacitors, engines, wires, and insulating materials that are bought by companies manufacturing complex machinery, including airplanes, trains, and cars. The opaqueness of mica’s supply chain has made it challenging for companies to fully scrutinize their suppliers’ sources. Given that mica is not currently listed by the Department of Labor as being mined by children in Madagascar, and no formal enforcement mechanism exists, many companies are not motivated to examine the origins of the components they purchase and assemble.

CNN exclusively reveals the motivations and the tactics behind an August 2018 failed attempt to kill Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro, including videos showing the preparation of a series of drones armed with C4 explosive, aimed at a parade in central Caracas. The plot was ultimately unsuccessful, but caused unexplained explosions, and a series of arrests. The report also revealed the US interest in who was behind the plot in its aftermath, and the basic tools the attackers used.

“Right To Fail” investigates what happens when adults with severe mental illness are not given adequate support to live independently. A 2014 civil rights federal court order forced New York to give long-institutionalized adults the choice to live in their own apartments. But in a 16-month investigation, PBS Frontline and ProPublica document deadly consequences, finding the state implemented the order without proper oversight.