VOICES FOR TRANSPARENCY

Story by: Lucy Nash, Elle Zahrouni & Lucy Brisbane McKay | TBIJ 2025

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has curated this photography exhibition exploring how financial secrecy in British offshore jurisdictions has enabled corruption, wrongdoing and human rights abuses.

Through portrait photography and first-person testimony, the exhibition tells the human stories of those impacted by structures that often seem opaque and remote, through anonymous corporations, hidden ownership, and offshore companies in the UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.

This exhibition also celebrates the role of investigative journalism in exposing abuses. Many of the cases were uncovered by independent reporters working under the pressure of legal threats and without full access to transparency tools such as public registries of company ownership.

We have timed this exhibition to coincide with the Illicit Finance Summit, a major international meeting which the UK government is hosting in June. You can also visit the exhibition for free at The Guild Church of St Katharine Cree in London until May 19, 2026.

Sam Byrne Lê Trung Khoa Dr Caroline Howard Jen McAdams Krishnendu Mukherjee Ibu Atun Trigraha Ryan Woodhouse Ragheb Al-Tawashi Shahama Ahmad Al-Sahn Thanasis Koukakis Patrizia Schlosser Dr Adriano Manuel Berislav Jelinic Mohammed Al-Daqduqi Clare Rewcastle Brown Xavier André Justo Ruth Low
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Our Enablers project, launched in summer 2020, investigates how the UK and its Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories enable oligarchs, dictators and criminals around the world.

The list of bad actors who have relied on British overseas territories is long. From Nigeria’s former military ruler Sani Abacha, who used a BVI-registered company to stash at least $450m of the $2bn he looted from the state, to a subsidiary of Halliburton which paid $132m to a secretive Gibraltar firm, some of which was used to bribe senior Nigerian officials to secure a lucrative gas plant contract.

Calls for reform have met resistance from the territories. But MPs and anti-corruption campaigners argue the UK has both the power, and the responsibility, to tackle the flow of dirty money.

This exhibition tells the human stories of those affected, serving as a reminder that financial secrecy causes real and lasting harm.

It has been put together by:

Portrait of Lucy Nash

Lucy Nash

Portrait of Elle Zahrouni

Elle Zahrouni

Portrait of Lucy Brisbane McKay

Lucy Brisbane McKay

With the support of many other TBIJ colleagues who help bring untold stories to light:

Editor and CEO:
Franz Wild

Deputy Editor:
Katie Mark

Enablers Editors:
Eleanor Rose and Lawrence Marzouk

Production Editors:
Alex Hess and Frankie Goodway

Design:
Edin Pašović

Fact checkers:
Ero Partsakoulaki and Sasha Baker.

The exhibition has received support from the following organisations

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project Logo Transparency Interational Logo APPG on Anti-Corruption & Responsible Tax Logo Montpelier Foundation Templeton Research Sigrid Rausing Trust The Joffe Charitable Trust