Christopher Santora

Christopher Santora is an Assistant District Attorney for the Rackets Bureau of the New York County District Attorney’s Office.  His area of prosecution focus is white collar and financial crime, organized crime, and public corruption.

Previously, Mr. Santora worked for the United Nations sponsored “Special Court for Sierra Leone” for nearly eight years as one of the lead prosecution attorneys in cases against all of the armed factions involved in the country’s eleven year conflict.  From 2002 – 2006, Mr. Santora was one of the prosecutors in Freetown during trials against the RUF and the AFRC factions. Then from 2007 – 2010 he worked as one of the lead prosecutors in the case against the former Liberian President Charles Taylor that was recently concluded in the Hague.  During his time at the tribunal, he was deeply involved in both the evidence-gathering phase and actual trial phase of these war crimes cases.  He has also published opinion pieces for CNN, Huffington Post and other outlets in relation to the ICC, international criminal law, the conflicts in West Africa , and the connection of conflicts to natural resource exploitation.

Prior to working at the Sierra Leone Tribunal, Mr. Santora worked for the US Congress as a legislative aide primarily on matters involving US criminal law and international human rights issues.  While in the US Congress, Mr. Santora worked extensively on policies related to Africa and human rights including sanctions efficacy, resource explanation, and the first legislation and multilateral agreement to prevent “conflict diamonds” known as the “Kimberly” process.

Amaelle Guiton

Amaelle Guiton is a Paris-based, independent journalist, covering digital culture, civil rights on the Internet and privacy technologies. She is a regular contributor to Slate.fr, also published on Lemonde.fr and Lesinrocks.com, and has a personal blog (techn0polis.net). She is the author of “Hackers: Au coeur de la résistance numérique” (Au Diable Vauvert, 2013). She teaches digital security to journalism students and NGO activists.

Lorenzo Bagnoli

Lorenzo Bagnoli is a freelance journalist. He has a Master in Journalism awarded by Catholic University in Milan. He started working in 2011 at the news agency Redattore sociale and at Terre di mezzo street magazine. Currently he is also a contributor at Il Fatto quotidiano and Q Code magazine. He worked for Peacereporter, E il mensile (Emergency), Linkiesta and Lettera43. In 2014 he published for Sperling&Kupfer “Lezioni di mafia”, a book based on 12 lessons run by the former general antimafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso. He filmed a documentary presented at Milano film festival 2011 edition called “Vacanze forzate” (together with Marco Billeci) about the massive flow of immigrants from North Africa during the Arab springs. He has been mentioned at the Gruppo dello zuccherificio prize for investigative journalism with a work about visa trafficking called “Paper borders”, published by Terre di mezzo street magazine. He runs three workshops to foreign journalism students in Senegal, Guinea Conakry and Gaza.

With Support From:

Khadija Sharife

Khadija Sharife is an African investigative researcher and writer. She helps coordinate the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), Investigative Dashboard (Africa), and the EU-funded Environmental Trade and Liability (EJOLT). She is a fellow to the World Policy Institute and contributor to the Tax Justice Network (Africa). She has published in a number of academic and mainstream media including Africa Confidential and the World Policy Journal. During the past year, she has helped uncover billions of dollars in mispriced minerals from African countries including South Africa,Angola, Zimbabwe among others. Her specialisation is financial opacity, political ecology and corruption. She is based in South Africa.

Justin Arenstein

He is an award-winning investigative journalist and digital strategist currently helping Google and the African Media Initiative strengthen Africa’s watchdog media by working with newsrooms to implement better forensic research and evidence-based reportage. This includes helping media adopt digital tools and data journalism strategies. Justin manages the $1m African News Innovation Challenge, is rolling out HacksHackers chapters across Africa, and supports newsroom-based experiments with citizen reporting, mobile news, and augmented reality platforms. Justin is a former Press Councillor in South Africa, and continues to serve on several media industry bodies and think tanks. His investigative reportage has helped put a senator, two legislature speakers and a provincial cabinet minister behind bars, and contributed to the ouster of two provincial premiers and several other cabinet ministers and state officials on charges ranging from child rape to corruption.

Friedrich Lindenberg

Friedrich Lindenberg is a news technologist with Code for Africa. He is also a coder and data journalist interested in how web technology can be utilised to create new narrative and investigative techniques. He was a 2013 Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Fellow at Spiegel Online. Previously, he contributed to various projects at the Open Knowledge Foundation, including OpenSpending, a platform that helps citizens across the world keep track of government finance.