Institutional support
Sponsorship, and the wall it sits behind.
Institutions fund investigative capacity here — regional desks, records access, translation, legal review. None of it touches subject selection or findings. The separation is structural rather than a matter of goodwill, and it is published so that it can be checked.
- Policy
- SPO-01
- Named-donor threshold
- 5% of annual revenue
- Vetting
- Pre-acceptance, documented
- Register
- Public, updated quarterly
Section 01
What sponsorship is, and what it is not.
Sponsorship funds the capacity to investigate a field. It does not fund an investigation, and there is no mechanism by which a sponsor can cause a subject to be covered or spared.
| Sponsorship buys | Sponsorship does not buy |
|---|---|
| Capacity in a broad field — cross-border finance, sanctions enforcement, procurement integrity | The selection of any subject, entity or person to be investigated |
| Named attribution in the annual report and on funded output | Advance sight of drafts, findings, publication dates or embargoes |
| A published statement of the sponsor's own reason for funding the work | Any right of reply, comment or objection to editorial conclusions |
| Institutional access to the archive for the sponsor's own staff | Suppression, delay, softening or deprioritisation of any record |
| An annual briefing on the state of the field, held after publication | Confidential access to unpublished material or to source information |
Section 02
The firewall
Four structural separations, each of which would have to be deliberately broken by a named person for a sponsor to influence coverage. That is the point: influence should require misconduct, not merely pressure.
Separated functions
Funding relationships are held by the operations function. Editors are not told who is in conversation with a prospective sponsor and do not take part in those conversations.
No subject-level funding
There is no mechanism to fund coverage of a named entity, sector rival or individual. Offers structured that way are declined and recorded as declined.
Conflict register
Every sponsor is entered against the subjects they could plausibly be connected to. A match reassigns the reporting before it starts and is disclosed on the published record.
Termination is survivable
No single sponsor may exceed the concentration cap. If a sponsor withdraws over coverage, the work continues and the withdrawal is reported.
Section 03
Who we will not take money from.
The vetting happens before acceptance and is documented. A prospective sponsor that fails any of these is declined regardless of the sum involved.
Entities profiled in the archive, and their owners, officers, counsel, communications agencies and reputation contractors. Entities under sanctions in any jurisdiction we publish from. Entities whose beneficial ownership cannot be established to the standard we would apply to a subject.
Funders seeking to condition support on subject selection, framing, timing or outcome. Funders whose principal interest appears to be the coverage of a commercial rival. Funders who require that their support remain undisclosed, since undisclosed sponsorship is a conflict by construction.
Where a sponsor becomes a subject during the term, the conflict is registered publicly, the coverage is reassigned to editors with no exposure to the relationship, and the sponsorship is terminated. The record of that sequence is published with the resulting story.
Section 04
How a sponsorship is agreed
Five stages, all documented. The written agreement is summarised publicly, including any condition attached to the funding.
- Step 01
Approach
The prospective sponsor sets out the field they want to support and their own interest in it, in writing.
- Step 02
Vetting
Ownership, sanctions status, litigation and archive presence are checked to the same standard we apply to a subject.
- Step 03
Conflict mapping
The sponsor is mapped against existing and foreseeable subjects. Matches are registered before anything is signed.
- Step 04
Agreement
Scope, term, amount and the absence of editorial rights are recorded in writing, with the firewall terms incorporated.
- Step 05
Publication
The sponsorship is entered in the public register and appears in the annual report with amount, term and conditions.
Section 05
Disclosure thresholds
Disclosure is not discretionary and does not depend on whether the relationship is flattering.
| Condition | Disclosure | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Any sponsorship, any amount | Published | Public sponsor register, updated quarterly |
| Above the named-donor threshold | Named with amount | Annual transparency report |
| Any condition attached to funding | Published in full | Sponsor register and annual report |
| Sponsor connected to a published subject | Disclosed on the record itself | The affected dossier or report |
| Offer declined on integrity grounds | Reported in aggregate | Annual transparency report |
Fund a field, not a finding.
If you want to support investigative capacity in cross-border finance, sanctions enforcement or procurement integrity, the conversation starts with what you want covered and ends with you having no say in it.