Our Investigations on TV
Paper trail media's investigations are regularly featured on TV. Our exclusive partner is the German broadcaster ZDF. ZDF is hosting the award-winning weekly investigative magazine "ZDF frontal". The show offers reports, analyses and background information on current topics in politics, business and society.
The opioid crisis in Germany
Purdue Pharma, accused of fueling the US-opioid crisis, ist bankrupt and facing lawsuits. However, its owner, the Sackler familiy, are apparently still profiting from opioid sales via the company's global counterparts. One important market: Germany.
Top journalist paid by Putin ally
The influential German author and TV-broadcaster Hubert Seipel was paid by a Russian oligarch for his work on two books sympathetic to the Russian president Vladimir Putin. The case is one of the first linking a western journalist to undisclosed offshore payments from Russia.
Betrayal of Secrets
Former German Air Force officers have been training pilots for the Chinese military for years. An investigation by paper trail media, ZDF and SPIEGEL shows:, at least a handful of former German air force officers are employed as trainers for fighter pilots in China.
VulkanFiles
The Russian company NTC Vulkan looks like a normal cybersecurity company. However, a leak of secret files exposed how Vulkan's engineers support hacking operations, train operatives, spread disinformation and sections of the internet.
Digital Mercenaries Uncovered
The Israeli company "Team Jorge" offers disinformation campaigns for money - worldwide. The joint #Storykillers-research by ZDF, SPIEGEL, STANDARD, Haaretz and Tamedia with the investigative network Forbidden Stories reveals the extent of the dubious disinformation activities.
Fuel for Russia's bombing war
A joint venture of the German group Wintershall Dea supplies Russia's most important producer of aviation fuel despite the attack on Ukraine. It supplies air force bases whose pilots are held responsible for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, as joint research by SPIEGEL and ZDF shows.
In the past, paper trail media's Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer and Hakan Tanriverdi have also worded for respectively collaborated with the public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk and ARTE.
Wanted
He is a key figure in the struggle between the superpowers USA and China. He is on the FBI's wanted list with a five million dollar bounty on his head. Intelligence agencies have wanted to stop him for decades: Karl Lee. With the help of the Chinese businessman, Iran was able to build the largest missile arsenal in the Middle East.
Xinjiang Police Files
In an award-winning investigation an international team of journalists, Bayerischer Rundfunk and SPIEGEL analyzed never-before-seen photos of inside Chinese mass internment camps in Xinjiang. The images document the oppresion of Uyghurs in China.