Al Jazeera Investigates

In the shadows of the UN’s climate conference, our undercover reporters, posing as criminals from Hong Kong, arrange a meeting with Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa. There’s a billion-dollar plan on the table to turn Victoria Falls into a mega-casino on the scale of Las Vegas and Macau.

Episode Credits:
This episode was written and produced by Kevin Hirten with help from Amy Walters. Alexander James and Sarah Yeo are the lead investigators of this series.
Craig Pennington is our sound designer. Clean Cuts does the final sound mix. Eric Samothrakis composed our theme song. Our engagement producer is Hasan Rrahmani. Peter Charley is the show’s Executive Producer, Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s Head of Audio and Phil Rees is Al Jazeera’s Director of Investigative Journalism.

Connect with us: @ajiunit on Twitter

The stakes continue to rise as the AJ I-Unit gets closer to the center of power. Our undercover team meets one of Zimbabwe’s most powerful diplomats who offers to help launder a billion dollars on our behalf. With buy-in at the highest levels of government, it’s clear nothing is off the table. 

Episode Credits:
This episode was written and produced by Kevin Hirten with help from Amy Walters. Alexander James and Sarah Yeo are the lead investigators of this series.
Craig Pennington is our sound designer. Clean Cuts does the final sound mix. Eric Samothrakis composed our theme song. Our engagement producer is Hasan Rrahmani. Peter Charley is the show’s Executive Producer, Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s Head of Audio and Phil Rees is Al Jazeera’s Director of Investigative Journalism.

Connect with us: @ajiunit on Twitter

When it comes to laundering illicit funds through the gold trade, all roads seem to lead to Dubai. The AJ I-Unit gains access to the city’s famed Gold Tower where we learn how traders disguise the true origin of smuggled gold and dirty money. 

Episode Credits:
This episode was written and produced by Kevin Hirten with help from Amy Walters. Alexander James and Sarah Yeo are the lead investigators of this series.
Craig Pennington is our sound designer. Clean Cuts does the final sound mix. Eric Samothrakis composed our theme song. Our engagement producer is Hasan Rrahmani. Peter Charley is the show’s Executive Producer, Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s Head of Audio and Phil Rees is Al Jazeera’s Director of Investigative Journalism.

Connect with us: @ajiunit on Twitter

It all starts with a pack of illegal cigarettes bought on the streets of Johannesburg, South Africa. The AJ I-Unit follows the money as it’s laundered by a flamboyant gangster known as Mo Dollars. His former partners tell all about his lavish lifestyle and audacious schemes to launder millions.

Episode Credits:
This episode was written and produced by Kevin Hirten with help from Amy Walters. Alexander James and Sarah Yeo are the lead investigators of this series.
Craig Pennington is our sound designer. Clean Cuts does the final sound mix. Eric Samothrakis composed our theme song. Our engagement producer is Hasan Rrahmani. Peter Charley is the show’s Executive Producer, Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s Head of Audio and Phil Rees is Al Jazeera’s Director of Investigative Journalism.

Connect with us: @ajiunit on Twitter

He nearly bankrupted Kenya and now he’s back to his old tricks. Our undercover team meets with Kamlesh Pattni, the notorious businessman behind the famed Goldenberg Scandal. Pattni tells all about how he cleans dirty money through the international gold trade. 

Episode Credits:
This episode was written and produced by Kevin Hirten with help from Amy Walters. Alexander James and Sarah Yeo are the lead investigators on this series.
Craig Pennington is our sound designer. Clean Cuts does the final sound mix. Eric Samothrakis composed our theme song. Our engagement producer is Hasan Rrahmani. Peter Charley is the show’s Executive Producer, Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s Head of Audio and Phil Rees is Al Jazeera’s Director of Investigative Journalism.

Connect with us: @ajiunit on Twitter

The AJ I-Unit goes undercover to expose some of Africa’s biggest gold smugglers and money launderers. We take you inside a scheme to wash millions of dollars by trading gold from Southern Africa to the Middle East and back again. Find out why gold is the key that unlocks it all.

Episode Credits:
This episode was written and produced by Kevin Hirten with help from Amy Walters. Alexander James and Sarah Yeo are the lead investigators on this series.
Craig Pennington is our sound designer. Clean Cuts does the final sound mix. Eric Samothrakis composed our theme song. Our engagement producer is Hasan Rrahmani. Peter Charley is the show’s Executive Producer, Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s Head of Audio and Phil Rees is Al Jazeera’s Director of Investigative Journalism.

Connect with us: @ajiunit on Twitter

Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise election as UK Labour leader in 2015 ignites a vicious internal war within the Party. The left flank has the people but the right flank has the power.

The Labour Files, a massive leak of internal documents, reveal how Corbyn’s opponents within the party manoeuvered to disable him as the Labour leader – abandoning democracy in the process.

The factional war is over. Sir Keir Starmer is the new Leader. The Labour left is scattered and shattered.  But the party leadership is in no mood to reconcile.  The Labour Files show an unprecedented effort to purge the party of Jeremy Corbyn supporters and make sure what happened in 2015 can never happen again.

A scandal over antisemitism in the UK Labour Party engulfs the final months of Jeremy Corbyn’s time as leader.  But, as The Labour Files show, the facts don’t match the public narrative that sets in following a brutal, internal conflict and the broadcast of a controversial BBC documentary. 

In the 2017 general election, Jeremy Corbyn shocks everyone after falling just a few thousand votes short of becoming Prime Minister. The Labour Files, a massive leak of internal party documents, reveal how panic over Corbyn’s success unites his opponents.

Meanwhile, a new scandal is brewing that will ultimately lead to his downfall.

‘The Truth Illusion’ explores one of the most profound questions that philosophers through the ages have tried to answer. What can we prove to be the truth?

In today's deeply divided societies, is it even possible for people to agree on a common ‘reality’?

Al Jazeera investigates how those deepening divisions began and how they have eroded faith in authority – creating conspiracy theories and ‘alternative facts’.

When Al Jazeera's I-Unit released its investigation into sexual misconduct against women at British Universities in late 2021, it created a storm on social media. But after the revelations, has anything changed?

In this episode, Degrees of Abuse: The Impact, we find out what’s happened to the four male academics accused of abuse. We also hear from women in each case about how it felt to finally hear the names made public and what kind of response they've received.

*Please note some listeners may find these accounts upsetting. 

The PhD student at Glasgow University was charismatic and charming and part of his appeal was his tragic past. But his relationships with several women became abusive and controlling.  As our investigation dug deeper into his history in his home country, we uncovered his lies and the real story of his murdered wife.

*Please note some listeners may find these accounts upsetting. 

More incredible revelations about how a PhD student at Glasgow University lied about his dead wife and falsely accused innocent people of killing her.  Question is, why has it taken almost four years for Glasgow University to investigate multiple complaints about him?

*Please note some listeners may find these accounts upsetting. 

Students started off admiring this lecturer at the University of Glasgow.  They thought he cared about their academic careers.  But when his comments and messages became more intimate and personal, they say he crossed boundaries and started grooming.

*Please note some listeners may find these accounts upsetting. 

Four women delivered separate complaints to Glasgow University about the behaviour of the same lecturer.  Their experiences were strikingly similar but the University found the only person to have done anything wrong, wasn’t the accused, but the accuser.

*Please note some listeners may find these accounts upsetting. 

He’s a famous professor at Oxford in the UK, one of the world’s most prestigious universities. But across three decades and three institutions, women have described him as a sexual predator. During a two-year investigation, Al Jazeera’s I-Unit uncovers systematic failures inside the walls of academia that have only served to protect their lecturers. We hear from women who are fighting to shift the balance of power. 

*Please note some listeners may find these accounts upsetting. 

He’s a leading academic at the University of Oxford. His expertise is in times gone by.  Both students and other lecturers say his drunken and abusive behaviour is also a throwback and has no place in the modern world.

*Please note some listeners may find these accounts upsetting. 

Desperate to do a deal, Christopher Samuelson enlists the help of a former cop who’s prepared to push the limits of the law. This ‘dirty trickster’ claims he can get us phone records, private emails and even a new identity – all in the name of deceiving the football authorities and getting a deal done.

In this episode, master dealmaker, Christopher Samuelson, schools our undercover reporters in the dark arts of offshore finance. The I-Unit digs into his past as a money manager to some of Russia’s most powerful oligarchs. Plus, he reveals shocking new details about his role as a middleman in the sales of Reading FC and Aston Villa FC.