Greg Palast

Puffin awards made possible the initial research and months-long investigaitons required for these major public interest stories:

2007: Chevron conceals evidence of toxic dumping in the Amazon. [Link] In the Ecuador rainforest, gathered first-hand evidence of oil waste dumping, illness among indigenous residents. Uncovered confidential document: Texaco’s president order to destroy evidence.

2008 – Racially-Biased Voter Suppression in the US.
It was Palast who, in 2000, for The Guardian of Britain, discovered that 56,000 African-Americans were wrongly tagged “felons” and purged from Florida voter rolls.

In 2008, the Palast team traveled the US uncovering an extraordinary range of methods [such as “caging”] to suppress, purge, discourage and fail to count minority voter ballots. His reports appeared in Rolling Stone [co-authored by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.], in Harpers and on BBC, WABC-TV and Democracy Now!, and PBS’ Now.

2009 – Finance Vultures Attack Africa

With Puffin support, Palast, in Liberia, uncovered a massive fraud by US vulture financiers who had seized control of the war-destroyed nation’s funds. Palast’s report resulted in Britain’s Parliament outlawing vulture funds the day after Palast broadcast his report on BBC. For In These Times and Democracy Now!

2010 – International investigation of BP.

Investigation of the unreported causes of the Deepwater Horizon blow-out; with reports from the the Arctic Circle, the Gulf of Mexico, London and Caspian Sea (where Palast was arrested by the Security Ministry of Azerbaijan).

Greg Palast is the author of three New York Times bestsellers based on his reportage for BBC Television’s premier current affairs program Newsnight and Britain’s Guardian.

Additional Websites: http://www.StealBackYourVote.org, http://www.VulturesPicnic.org