Dear Friend and Supporter,

In a significant victory for press freedom, diamond billionaire Beny Steinmetz has failed in a bid to
force Global Witness to hand over source material gathered in a corruption investigation after the
UKs data watchdog upheld statutory protections for public-interest journalism.
The Independent newspaper explained the issue well: this is an important test case which enables
campaign groups to claim the same public interest safeguards as traditional media for material they
hold arising from investigations which include the compiling of in-depth reports on allegations of
bribery and corruption affecting the environment.
You may recall that at the end of 2013, Beny Steinmetz and three executives of his companies, BSG
Resources (BSGR) and Onyx Financial Advisors, filed claims for alleged breaches of the Data
Protection Act in the UK High Court, saying Global Witnesss reporting on a bribery scandal in West
Africa infringed their privacy by misusing their personal data. The court passed the case to the
Information Commissioners Office, which stated, on 15th December 2014, that it is satisfied that
Global Witness is only processing the personal data requested for the purposes of journalism and
is therefore able to rely on an exemption, available for public-interest journalism, to provisions of
the Data Protection Act.
With the Information Commissioners ruling, journalists and campaign groups can continue to
expose corruption without fear of the Data Protection Act being abused to shut down investigations
and endanger sources.
The story has been picked up by a variety of news sources such as the Financial Times, The Guardian,
The Independent and Haaretz.

Our thanks to all of you who have supported our work and enabled us to continue our
investigations. For more information see www.globalwitness.org.
With best wishes

Christine Oram
Director of Development