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Tuesday 17 January 2017

Accidental Whistle-Blower

What began in 2010 as a blog about an environmental crisis in the Malaysian state of Sarawak is now the most comprehensive portrait of a diseased body politic and its attendant scandals.

Rewcastle Brown has benefited from the fact that many involved in Malaysian politics are increasingly jaded with it. Her biggest scoops have depended on documents and information leaked by quietly disgruntled government and financial officials. Anonymous tips continue to clog her inbox.

At the bottom of every Sarawak Report webpage, above the site’s teal logo, there’s a link with instructions for how to send her an encrypted email. “I’m fairly practiced at squirreling out stories and sources — I talk to people; I ask people if they know anyone worth talking to,” Rewcastle Brown says. “But now people have started finding me, because they know I’m the only guy on the block who does this.”

Read the rest of it on TIME's The Accidental Whistle-Blower: How a Retired London Journalist Uncovered Massive Corruption Half a World Away.