Multi-award winning investigative reporter at
@theipaper
Two-time Pulitzer finalist and former young journalist of the year.
richard.holmes
@inews
.co.uk
💥Boris Johnson has used the compromised security of his old phone to delay handing WhatsApps over to the Covid Inquiry.
But one current and four former intelligence sources say there is “no reason” why material can't be securely accessed "very easily".
🚨NEW: An alleged Russian intelligence agent is living in the UK and his family used the Government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme to join him.
A six month investigation for
@theipaper
Exclusive: Hidden Chinese tracking device ‘found in UK government car’ sparking national security fears.
Officials had dismantled government vehicles and swept them for Chinese tracking SIMs to step up the UK’s defence against espionage
Former US Intelligence agent David Grusch, while testifying to Congress in the UFO hearings, has said that US officials recovered a non-human aircraft containing non-human biological remains.
Am I dreaming?
🚨Stay Tuned🚨
An explosive international financial investigation of historic scale led by BuzzFeed News and ICIJ drops tomorrow 💰
Its the biggest investigation we've ever published.
#FinCENFiles
🚨NEW: UK intelligence have raised security concerns about a Russian-owned flat overlooking MI6’s headquarters.
Concerns were raised after
@theipaper
traced the owners to a Moscow address next to a Kremlin facility responsible for developing Novichok.
🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨
The FinCEN Files
An explosive cache of secret documents reveal how criminals use the world’s biggest banks to finance terror and death, and the government doesn’t stop it.
#FinCENFILES
- a BuzzFeed News and ICIJ investigation
Tomorrow the Foreign Affairs Committee is holding an evidence session into the Wagner Group.
They will be told that Wagner is “a terrorist arm of the Russian state masquerading as a private security contractor.”
EXCLUSIVE: A UK law firm is bringing an action against Wagner Group, which faces allegations of terrorism, political assassinations, and using rape as a weapon of war
An intelligence officer currently advising the Government after holding a senior position at GCHQ told i:
“I really can’t see why the phone can’t be switched on in a controlled environment, the relevant WhatsApp data extracted and then turned off again.”
🚨NEW: Far-right groups and football hooligans organising counter-protests to pro-Palestinian groups are the main risk of public disorder ahead of Remembrance Weekend, according to the Met
🚨NEW: A Russian intelligence chief responsible for the unit that carried out the 2018 Salisbury poisonings is considered a leading suspect in the death of Prigozhin, intelligence sources have said.
NEW: The Russian 'asset' living in London with his family through the Homes for Ukraine scheme is residing at a property linked to members of Ukraine’s pro-Russian Communist party and another alleged FSB agent.
Update on a months-long investigation 🇬🇧🇷🇺
NEW: Four serving and former British intelligence sources say the WhatsApp messages on Boris Johnson’s old phone can still be accessed even though he claims to have forgotten his password
With
@janemerrick23
💥
🚨EXCLUSIVE:
A leaked FBI letter reveals that the UK Government was informed about a Chinese hack on MPs two years ago but did not warn those affected until last month.
The targeted MPs are now furious and demand answers.
🚨NEW: The UK secretly and "indefinitely" paused any sanctions against Chinese firms implicated in human rights abuses.
The move came in November, as David Cameron took his post at the Foreign Office, internal documents reveal. 🇨🇳🇬🇧
“If they’re going down that route of it being unsafe to switch on then you just switch on the phone in a Faraday cage,” a former intelligence analyst said. “It all seems like Boris is trying to prevent being held to account.”
UK government expected to sanction the prison officers at the institution where Navalny died, according to Bloomberg.
I’m sure the guards at the remote Russian penal colony will be gutted they can’t shop at Harrods. 🤦♂️
A former official at the Government Security Group said Mr Johnson’s letter was “odd”.
He told i: “Recovering data from a device that might be compromised or have malware on it isn’t an unusual task in digital forensics.”
On Monday, I was told by a source close to the investigation that US military equipment had picked up a “large acoustic signal” with the “signature of an implosion” at the time the Titan submersible went dark.
But the US coast guard repeatedly ignored me and kept this quite 1/
As Russian troops retreat strongholds in eastern Ukraine they leave a trail of booby traps and mines.
This Brit, digging on his hands and knees, is clearing a path for Ukrainian troops and discovering the first examples of Russia's war crimes.
🚨NEW: UK intelligence officials have been repeatedly targeted in Chinese “honeytrap” plots.
Six UK intelligence sources said China is ramping up efforts to glean national secrets through seduction and blackmail. Four had been targeted personally.
Ugh. Awful development. "After a fierce battle, Ukrainian control over the Chernobyl site was lost. The condition of the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant, confinement, and nuclear waste storage facilities is unknown," said Mykhailo Podoliak, adviser to head of Chernobyl plant
All the intelligence officers said the relevant data could be accessed “really very easily” with the use of a faraday cage - a barrier which surrounds a sensitive object or building to prevent the penetration or escape of electromagnetic signals - to securely turn on the device.
🚨EXCLUSIVE
Russian officials are being offered British citizenships to defect and pass secrets to UK intelligence agencies.
The tactic has been in use since the invasion of Ukraine, with official sources now accepting that it is no longer confidential.
🚨NEW: The Foreign Affairs Committee have published their scathing 82-page report into the Wagner Group.
It says the Government has “under-played and under-estimated” the Group’s activity for almost a decade.
In 2013, Anshuman Chandra handed the FBI documents which showed Standard Chartered's books were awash with clients linked to Iran, terrorism, and money laundering.
Days later, investigators leaked his name to the bank.
Read our latest in
#FinCENFiles
NEW: UK intelligence sources have told
@theipaper
that London is 'full' of Russian spies.
The claims come after our investigation revealed that a suspected FSB agent was living in the UK with his family after utilising the Homes For Ukraine scheme.
The Home Secretary has agreed to review all 14 suspected Russian assassinations that
@BuzzFeedNews
revealed last year. MI5 & National Crime Agency will assist
Some news: I'm thrilled to announce that I am starting today at
@theipaper
as a senior reporter looking at breaking exclusives and ambitious investigations with the brilliant team here.
Got flaming hot tips? Hit me up on richard.holmes
@inews
.co.uk
Why were British ex-Special Forces and Royal Marines in Gaza?
A private intel firm was paid by World Central Kitchen to send the ex-servicemen to Gaza as Close Protection Medics, according to a security source with knowledge of the situation.
@theipaper
“He shouldn’t be a free man, frankly" a former FBI agent on the agency’s kleptocrat team said.
The officer spent years investigating the businessman and was stunned to learn he was living a comfortable life in the UK.
💥NEW: Russian and Chinese hackers accessed the UK Foreign Office’s internal systems in a major security breach kept secret from the public.
Cyber attackers gained access to emails, internal messages, and the inner workings of the Govt department.
@theipaper
The London penthouse sits on the top floor of the St George Wharf development with a roof terrace overlooking the MI6 HQ.
We learned that security concerns were raised about the apartment block, as well as Russian and Chinese-linked owners purchasing properties there.
Major General Andrey Averyanov heads the GRU unit 29155, linked to multiple assassinations and interference campaigns abroad, including the Salisbury poisonings.
UK intelligence sources said Averyanov was a leading suspect after holding a “long grudge” with Prigozhin.
@theipaper
The story is based on hundreds of pages of US intelligence documents, internal FBI emails, and testimony from dozens of intelligence sources from the UK, US and Ukraine.
It is one of the most well-briefed pieces of national security reporting I have worked on.
@theipaper
The Ukrainian tycoon is sanctioned by Ukraine and is suspected of large-scale financial crimes by Ukraine’s security service.
He is also suspected by the FBI of being a foreign agent for Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), according to a cache of intelligence documents.
NEW: A Russian government plane has flown to the US to pick up key diplomats in Washington DC and take them back to Moscow.
The move comes amid growing tensions after Wagner's rebellion.
@theipaper
Our investigation found the flat is registered to Poresso Group Ltd, a Russian firm with a registered Moscow address next to the Kremlin’s supplier of deadly toxins used in state assassinations.
Land Registry records show Poresso bought the property in 2010 for £735,000.
@theipaper
During the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian businessman was able to enter the UK on a pre-existing visa.
By the summer of 2022, the suspected FSB agent had set up a lavish lifestyle in London, living in a multi-million-pound apartment.
A senior partner at McCue Jury and Partners just announced during an evidence session to MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee:
"This is the first time in the world that Wagner and their likes have been sued by its victims - a historic moment"
Junior Doctors are qualified doctors who have completed a medical degree and can have up to nine years' of working experience as a hospital doctor.
They make up just under half of doctors in the NHS and this labelling only reveals the Govt's tone going into negotiations.
'Doctors in training as I prefer to call them walked out of our negotiations'
Health Secretary Victoria Atkins spoke to
#BBCBreakfast
about the 72 hour junior doctors strike in England
@WSJ
@bkesling
International spent fortunes providing equipment and expertise, were they also kept in the dark?
There are some big questions over the way this operation was carried out, and the hand selecting of information to be released to the public. But I doubt I will get the answers 8/
The documents Show Top Executives Were Warned Deutsche Bank Was Vulnerable To Money Laundering. The Bank Failed To Stop A $10 Billion Scam
#FinCENFiles
🚨NEW: Hong Kong expats in the UK who fled Chinese oppression have been followed, photographed, harassed, and intimidated by informants for the Chinese Government.
Great piece from
@joeduggan1
which I was privileged to help with.
My brilliant former colleague
@tombwarren
explains what it was like to report on suspected Russian assassinations in the UK.
The opening line sums the experience up perfectly:
"There are moments in life where you really do think you have lost your mind"
This year's Pulitzer prize cited four members of BuzzFeed's London newsroom.
This is a newsroom that has been cut from the inside and bruised from the outside. We watched our friends and colleagues lose their jobs and have kept our heads down during the most difficult of times.
New: In an exclusive interview with
@theipaper
, the head of Ukraine's financial task force set out his plans to tackle corruption among the country's elite.
Three days later, he was forced to resign.
I reveal what went on behind the scenes 👇
Senior backbench Conservative MP,
@MPIainDS
told i: “I don’t know how much more the UK needs to know about the threat China poses to us all.
“Surely it is time to change the integrated review and refer to China as a systemic threat.”
Ukrainian govt source tells me that President, the Government, and the deputies remain in Kyiv where some have been given weapons for self-defence.
"Now you should do everything" to deter Putin, he says. "Kyiv is ready to negotiate, but we will not sign the surrender."
🚨NEW: The UK is holding diplomatic talks with Ukraine over the future of a suspected Russian intelligence agent living in the UK after our investigation.
🇬🇧🇺🇦IMPACT with
@DavidParsley50
Prominent far-right figures as well as groups linked to football hooliganism have issued rallying cries for supporters to descend on London this weekend, with some organising to meet at locations such as Victoria station before gathering to “protect” monuments.
It looks like the UK will respond to Navalny's death with yet more sanctions against Russia.
Emails show how Russia's Deposit Insurance Agency, dubbed 'Putin's Bailiff' for its persecution of dissidents in UK courts, may be next in line for designations.
The case is being brought by a group of Ukrainian victims who have been evacuated to the UK but it also “symbolically represents” all Ukrainians who have “suffered loss as a result of the war”, according to a statement by McCue Jury and Partners.
@MPIainDS
The geolocating device had been allegedly placed into a vehicle inside a sealed part imported from a supplier in China and installed by the vehicle manufacturer.
The manufacturers fit the parts in cars without opening them because of various warranty and commercial agreements.
We planned to publish our findings this AM UK time. The
@WSJ
and
@bkesling
got there first with the story, which I am glad to see out.
But why did the US Coast Guard keep this under wraps the entire time? 7/
However, UK intelligence agencies investigating the wreckage are still open minded about the events and individuals behind them and believe it’s too early to confirm anything for certain, i has been told.
Two intelligence sources confirmed the thorough search of govt vehicles after fears they had been compromised by hidden devices.
At least one SIM card capable of transmitting location data was discovered in the sweep which uncovered “disturbing things”, a security source said.
He added that a letter before action has been sent to Yevgeny Prigozhin – alleged founder of Wagner – accusing him and Putin of “intentionally causing harm and suffering” to the people of Ukraine, and carrying out "an illegal war through terrorism.”
In the past 24 hours reporters at
@theipaper
have:
- revealed the royal superfan arrested during the coronation.
- highlighted the Tory arguing for taxes to be cut sooner.
- Shown how energy firms are still forcing entry into homes.
- Been shortlisted for Orwell Prizes
💥💥💥
A Ukrainian intelligence source told
@DavidParsley50
that Ukrainian Security Services (SBU) believed Averyanov was involved in the crash but said the Russian state authorities are currently seeking to question a pilot who worked for Prigozhin, who was not flying the plane.
🚨EXCLUSIVE:
A Chinese cyber-attack on UK Parliament was more widespread than the Government initially revealed.
Over 30 MPs, peers, and their parliamentary staff were targeted by the hack, but only four were warned about it.
A UK intelligence source told i: "Putin historically likes revenge 'cold'. So the manner and timing of the departure of Prigozhin isn't surprising. Many, including me, thought his days were numbered. there is a lot of discussion around the name mentioned (Averyanov).
🚨NEW: A major Chinese data leak has revealed evidence of an alleged industrial-scale attempt to hack Whitehall departments, including the Foreign Office.
The documents, which are all in mandarin, are being urgently assessed by UK intelligence agencies.
🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Wagner troops are operating in Sudan and have been actively involved in fighting in the country.
Wagner troops have been patrolling in the Port of Sudan, and been involved in gunfights near the capital, Khartoum.
With
@mollyblackall
“Averyanov oversaw the operation which was carried out," a former Russian intelligence source said. "Averyanov has also been in charge of replacing Wagner in Africa with 20,000 Russian military.”
EXCLUSIVE
We can't quite say yet.
But it's the biggest investigation
@BuzzFeedNews
has ever published.
Sign up for our daily newsletter to make sure you don’t miss it 👇
Writing in
@theipaper
Jason McCue - due to give evidence on Tuesday - says Wagner's activities are "the definition of terrorism."
"This is not controversial. What is controversial is that Wagner has not been designated as a terrorist group – or indeed Putin himself"
The law firm launched a crowdfunding page to generate public support to identify further victims, and “target billions of dollars in reparations from those responsible for the atrocities in Ukraine.”
They stated plans to commence similar action in the United States “imminently”
The case has support from
@BorisJohnson
who said the UK can be “proud” of the efforts "to prosecute Putin’s war criminals.”
“We are sending a message to every part of his war machine," he said. "They face the threat of sanctions and prosecution for the rest of their lives”.
Given what an implosion meant - sudden loss of life for all on board - we decided not to publish this and wait until a loss of life was confirmed.
Investigators continued to say they held on to hope, reiterating that this was a rescue mission, not a recovery 2/
🚨NEW: The UK secretly and "indefinitely" paused any sanctions against Chinese firms implicated in human rights abuses.
The move came in November, as David Cameron took his post at the Foreign Office, internal documents reveal. 🇨🇳🇬🇧
@theipaper
Just metres down the road sits the State Scientific Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology - placed under sanctions by the US and EU for its significant role in the development of chemical weapons used in the poisoning of politician Alexei Navalny.
I'm based in the UK, so I couldn't attend the press conferences.
Instead, I regularly emailed the coast guard, US Navy, Canadian military, and UK MOD to get answers and ask why they hadn't come forward with the evidence of an implosion. 4/
So disappointing when I hear about young journalists having pitches rejected only to find a senior colleague publish the same story days later.
Shocked how many times I hear this. Be better
@theipaper
Like many other owners of properties at the London development, Poresso does not list its Moscow address.
Instead, it uses the details of a "go-to" offshore agent for Russian officials and oligarchs based in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) called Trident Trust.
@theipaper
On making the purchase, Poresso registered its address to a drab Stalin-era apartment block in Moscow.
Built in 1940 on the side of a busy highway in eastern Moscow, flats in the 9-storey block are currently on sale for around £40,000.
🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨
"Not fit for purpose"
A cache of secret documents and insiders reveal how the UK rolled out a flawed counter terror intelligence-sharing system right as the UK suffered one of its deadliest years from terrorism.
Once Upon a Time in Londongrad, a six part series based on BuzzFeed News reporting, airs on Sky Documentaries and streaming service NOW from 31st May! 🎥
@skytv
@risefilms
Messages in one anti-Islamic WhatsApp group seen by i, containing more than 1,000 members, calls on people to “fight back” against pro-Palestinian protesters, with one adding: “No surrender to these c***s, this is our House.”
@MPIainDS
The discovery of devices is believed by intelligence sources to be indicative of China’s broad approach to eavesdropping on the West rather than a specific targeting of ministers’ vehicles.
On Wednesday, the US coast guard said they had detected “banging” in 30-minute intervals coming from the area where the divers disappeared.
They continued their message of hope, using this information to indicate the Titan's passengers were alive 3/
I’ve said it before and il say it again. Journalism has a diversity problem.
Aspiring journos of any colour, gender, age, sex feel free to reach out if you’re interested in investigative journalism.
Can’t promise anything but I will always try and help.
“It is deeply regrettable that it was not until early 2022 that the Government began to invest greater resource in understanding the Wagner Network,” the report stated. “The Government’s failure to address the Wagner Network leads us to conclude a fundamental lack of knowledge.”
After yesterday's press conference confirming loss of life, I sent the coast guard a fourth email on this matter in just as many days. They ignored me again. 6/