This week we’ve got another great story for you about how the rich and powerful’s favourite lawyers threatened a police investigator looking into cryptofraudsters.

But first I wanted to thank those of you who donated so generously recently. We’ve got big plans to investigate the rise of hate and you’re a part of making them real.

And, as we all wonder how the peace deal between Israel and Hamas will play out, I wanted to share a thoughtful interview we did with Wael al-Dahdouh, the Al Jazeera bureau chief in Gaza, who carried on reporting hours after burying his wife and children. It was moving and humbling to hear Dahdouh speak about the thought process that allowed him to carry on. He kept working when his family and friends were being killed, often right beside him, and his homeland was being annihilated.

Running the Gaza team for Al Jazeera must be one of the hardest jobs around, both practically and emotionally. Dahdouh is now based in Qatar, but pinning him down was naturally tricky. So when he became available, we scrambled to set up a video call with him. Everyone in the newsroom cancelled meetings and huddled around the big screen together. Others hopped on the link from home.

Speaking through an interpreter, Dahdouh described how life was getting even harder for those in Gaza. “There are no safe places,” he said, adding quickly that he and his team “all feel that they have no choice but to continue”.

In the interview, Dahdouh calls out western indifference towards Gaza. But he also connects with a global feeling that much of the media is failing people. The press are not being direct and honest about what they see. Dahdouh is a true reporter to the core, who grew believing in the integrity necessary to do the job.

And what he says about how he feels now raises a mirror to us all.

Factchecked!

Each week we reveal a fascinating fact from our reporting…

Did you know?

When bosses shut a company and restart a similar business under another name, it’s called phoenixing – and it’s a tactic that helps them dodge debts owed to former employees.

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Thousands of people have won cases against their employers at a tribunal and still not been paid what they are owed – even after asking the government to help them get it.

Our latest investigation exposes how the UK government’s system is failing workers.

Read more here. 

Why we’ve put Carter-Ruck on trial

You may be wondering why we keep on digging into the law firm that has been hauled before the solicitors tribunal: Carter-Ruck.

Carter-Ruck are, in the grand scheme of things, a small outfit that operates quietly in the City of London. So they’ve written angry letters to journalists and critics of their clients, a cynic might say. Storm in a teacup.

I beg to differ. Carter-Ruck is the perfect example of how the rich and powerful protect themselves. That’s true even when the rich and powerful end up on the FBI’s most-wanted list, like Ruja Ignatova, the Carter-Ruck client at the heart of this story.

Ignatova’s OneCoin scam conned people like you and me out of $4 billion. But the fact that a gang of fraudsters like that can rely on lawyers to scare off whistleblowers means the odds of uncovering wrongdoing – whether by criminals, dodgy oligarchs or sexual predators – are against us.

Our latest dive into Carter-Ruck found new court documents that reveal the firm tried to “silence” a police investigator looking into OneCoin. When the police officer wrote to a website to ask it to take down articles he thought could encourage “vulnerable and impressionable people” to invest in OneCoin, Carter-Ruck warned him that his emails were “obviously defamatory”. When they didn’t hear back, they went to his boss.

Separately, documents we obtained from the tribunal show that Carter-Ruck tried to give the City of London Police “cause to doubt” its investigation into OneCoin.

The solicitors’ regulator decided Carter-Ruck doesn’t have a case to answer for that. Instead, a partner at the firm has been charged with writing an allegedly improper legal threat to a whistleblower. The firm is trying to get the case thrown out, arguing that the prosecution can’t feasibly show any professional misconduct.

But to zoom out again, the bigger problem here is that lawyers can threaten police officers investigating one of the biggest frauds of recent times, without apparently breaking any rules.

We spoke to a prominent lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner to get her take. She didn’t hold back.

If you want to hear more about Carter-Ruck and the murky world of reputation management, join us later this month. I’ll be sitting down with Dan Neidle (founder of Tax Policy Associates) and our very own senior reporter Ed Siddons to chat about the law firm’s reckoning.

Join us on Thursday October 23 on Zoom.

As always, our members have priority access to our events – their support gives us the financial security to take on the top dogs without living in fear of a libel suit. Joining our Insiders membership is the best way you can support our work and keep TBIJ going.