George Greenwood
The Times
His work resulted in new police investigations expected to recover millions of pounds from proceeds of crime, exposed a corporate campaign to undermine council child obesity reform leading to changes in government policy, and won major transparency victories in the courts.
He specialises in data-driven reporting, leveraging leaks, open data, commercially available databases, and FOI requests to deliver impactful public interest investigations.
In May, George exposed how British criminals stashed wealth in Dubai using a copy of the Gulf nation’s property ownership database.
The size of the database, and the array of nationalities of people included, meant a manual review of each record was not practical.
To find UK stories, George wrote a program to match names and dates of birth with UK criminals listed in a corporate due diligence database. This identified dozens of convicted fraudsters, money launderers, and drug dealers who owned luxury property in Dubai - including a Labour-linked money launderer who managed to buy property while in prison.
By matching the list with sanctions databases, George further uncovered financiers for Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis buying real estate in Dubai.
These revelations led to police investigations into some of those named.
In December, George uncovered a coordinated campaign by fast-food giant KFC to challenge planning restrictions that would have limited fast-food outlets near school entrances, which it feared could hit its profits.
Since no central planning challenge database exists in the UK, George had to build one from scratch. He was able to build a model of how KFC opposed planning reforms at one council, based on discussions with sources.
Then using advanced Google searches, he was able to build a database to identify where the company had repeated this approach across local government. His findings revealed that in over half of cases, KFC had succeeded in weakening or overturning planning restrictions.
Following his report, Labour proposed new policies to prevent food majors from undermining council health measures in this way.
George’s work also highlights the power of persistence in forcing government transparency.
When Suella Braverman was fired for misusing emails as Home Secretary, George put in an FOI request to determine if this also happened when she was Attorney General. It took an 18-month battle ending in a court case to force disclosure. This revealed that Braverman had misused email 127 times in potential breach of the ministerial code—something a former cyber security head described as a “clear vulnerability.” Timed to coincide with Braverman’s endorsement of Robert Jenrick for Conservative leader, the story spurred public questioning, with Braverman telling LBC that her breaches occurred because she “couldn’t get split screens to work” on her government laptop. These investigations demonstrate George’s ability to combine technical skills, legal expertise, and a keen news sense for what about a story would most engage readers to deliver impactful investigations.