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Your inside scoop on the week’s biggest stories
September 20, 2026

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Frankie Goodway,
Sunday Editor

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: annual survey month! Every year, I get to ask our readers how we can make the Bureau better.

Whether you read everything we publish, or just this newsletter, it’s really helpful to know what you want us to do more of, and what you enjoy from us. It takes about ten minutes to complete, and the feedback helps us all year long. So, if you can spare us the time, I’d really appreciate it.

P.S. Many thanks to Katie for covering while I took a much-needed holiday. It’s good to be back!

How Ben Delo built a money-laundering magnet

Ben Delo, who gave £36m to Reform UK last week, describes his guilty plea for violating a banking law in the US as a “spurious blip”. He accepted a plea deal in 2022 for wilfully failing to introduce anti-money-laundering protections on the cryptocurrency exchange that made him a billionaire – and he got a pardon from President Trump last year. But we went back to the original court documents, and found that US prosecutors accused Delo of making decisions that turned his business into a “magnet for money laundering and criminal activity”.

Five myths about net zero busted

There’s been a creeping campaign against net zero in recent months, led by pundits and political figures from Kemi Badenoch to Tony Blair. Having grudgingly accepted that climate change is real, they now want us to believe there’s nothing we can do to stop it. That’s why Grace Murray has put together a list of the five biggest lies and the actual facts that prove we can still take action to combat climate change.

⚡ Immediate impact

Grace has also recorded a series of videos breaking down each myth, if you want to offer a short, snappy rebuttal to any climate sceptics in your life. You can find the first one on Instagram here.

Naming names: why we do it and why we don't

Whenever we investigate wrongdoing, we always want to identify the people behind it. Sometimes we publish their names and faces – and sometimes we don’t. We wanted to explain why, and so Chrissie Giles, one of our deputy editors, has gone through all the conversations we have as a newsroom when we make that decision. Ultimately, we want wrongdoers to be held accountable – but not put at risk of harm.

Inside the story

Too often, journalists can forget that the decision-making processes we use every day are never explained to the people we serve: readers like you. And, more worryingly, if reporters don’t talk publicly about making these choices, how do we know they’re considering the risks to the people they write about?

Government immigration fees make £5bn a year

The UK government makes more money every year from people going through the immigration system than it gets in corporation tax from the energy, gas, water, sewage and hospitality industries combined. That’s because the Home Office is charging people applying for visas, citizenship and the right to remain in the UK up to 10 times what it actually costs to process the paperwork. The fees (which have risen rapidly) can quickly mount to thousands of pounds, and have left some families skipping meals to make ends meet. Lawyers and MPs – some of whom are now in government – have said the system takes advantage of people who have built their lives in the UK.

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What we’ve been reading

🔴 A Russian oligarch spent hundreds of thousands of dollars bankrolling Donald Trump Jr’s wedding, including hiring a private island propublica.org
🔴 A former MI5 agent who spent years undercover as a bomb maker for the IRA is now working for Stephen Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson hopenothate.org.uk
🔴 Police using Flock’s surveillance cameras to track licence plates are recording gibberish and jokes as the “reason” for their intrusive searches 404media.co

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