David Marchant of OffshoreAlert On Life As An Investigative Journalist

David Marchant is an investigative journalist, the founder and editor of OffshoreAlert, the leading online news portal for insolvencies, disputes and other problems in high value cross border finance. 

He started his career working for the Gwent Gazette before leaving Britain for sunnier climes. 

“It was a great grounding as a young journalist. But within six years I was living in Bermuda, which had zero unemployment and was a microcosm of capitalism.”

He initially took a job with the Royal Gazette daily newspaper, covering business. 

“And I knew nothing about business. I mean, nothing, right? I mean, much less the highly specialised international business that was conducted in Bermuda.”

Getting kicked out of Bermuda

Concerned his career wasn’t going anywhere, David refocused his efforts on investigative journalism, and was kicked out of the country while writing about a $65 million fraud committed by the who’s who of Bermuda. 

“When I say kicked out, I was no longer able to have a work permit to continue living and working in Bermuda. I’m the only journalist that I'm aware of that has been denied that right.”

It was then he launched OffshoreAlert. 

OffshoreAlert

While David’s initial motivation may have been to prove to the Bermuda authorities that he would not be silenced, he became interested in offshore financial centres more generally. David realised that although these were jurisdictions where major international business was being transacted there was very little news coming out about the companies and individuals that were based there.

Much of what David reports on Offshore Alert s is around potential fraud, in particular white collar crime. As such, he's been on the receiving end of a lot of lawyer’s letters. He’s been sued in Canada, in the US at federal and state court, in the High Court in London and at least twice in Panama and in Grenada. He’s also received death threats.

So how does he stay unemotional in the face of all this, and still carry on reporting?

Dealing with being sued

“I had to earn my spurs, I had to make people afraid to sue me. And you've got to go through the battles to earn that fear.”

The first person to sue David for libel was Marc Harris, an American accountant based in Panama. He was running a criminal enterprise, helping drug dealers conceal their money, while simultaneously stealing their money. 

“He [Marc] was later arrested in Nicaragua, put on a plane to the United States without any extradition proceedings, he was just deported. And he was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison.”

David has subsequently engineered a situation where he believes criminals are afraid of him, they’re afraid to even send a letter of complaint, much less sue him, because his attitude now is, ‘you want to sue me? I’m going to be your worst nightmare’.

The Speech Act of 2010

“Prior to 2010, any time I or the company got sued outside the United States, I would defend the actions. And trust me, that's an expensive process. I got sued in the Cayman Islands, my legal fees were $350,000.”

Now, if he gets sued outside of the US he doesn’t have to spend one single cent as opposed to potentially having to spend millions of dollars on fighting what he terms ‘a lost cause’. 

Ethical boundaries

David categorically states he wouldn’t touch large data dumps that were obtained illegally, such as the Panama Papers. It would make him incredibly uncomfortable. 

“With the Paradise Papers, I really didn't see that much evidence of criminality, it was more where we don't think this is right, which is a subjective opinion.”

As the organiser of conferences, he has to have a commercial relationship with the big offshore legal companies, some of whom he’s written stories about. 

So how does he continue to uncover wrongdoing and accept their money to sponsor his events?

“Our clientele are sophisticated. We cover high value cross border finance. And I think sophisticated people are more inclined to accept the fact that we are an independent company, we are a news organisation, first and foremost, that also holds conferences.”

Advice for future investigative journalists

First off, David wouldn’t recommend anyone enter the realm because the obstacles are so extreme. 

“But if despite me deterring them from going into it, they still wanted to do it, they would have passed the first test.”

Secondly, you’ve got to be emotional to want to do it, to be really pissed off at fraud, but you have to be able to leave emotion to one side. 

“If you can't prove something with documentary evidence, don't write it. Before you publish anything, you have to imagine yourself in court, defending to a legal standard what you're about to publish.”

Discussed in this podcast episode:

Getting kicked out of Bermuda
Founding OffshoreAlert
Dealing with death threats
The Speech Act of 2010
The Panama Papers
The Montfort Maxim

Links

https://montfort.london/
https://montfort.london/our-team/
OffshoreAlert
OffshoreAlert Fintel Conference