United Kingdom
(2024 British Press Awards - shortlisted team: Campaign of the year (Act Now on Asbestos, Sunday Times).
Shortlisted: 2023 British Press Awards, Feature Writer of the Year.
Shortlisted team: 2023 Society of Editors' Media Freedom Awards, Campaign of the Year (Act Now on Asbestos, Sunday Times).
Shortlisted: 2023 Fetisov International Journalism Awards, Contribution to civil rights reporting.)
* Scroll down for examples of my work.
I have been a journalist for more than 30 years. During that time, I have written for, or contributed to, The Independent (as Chief Reporter and co-founder of its investigations unit), Times, Guardian, Mail, London Evening Standard, Sunday Times Magazine, Observer Magazine, Independent and Guardian Saturday magazines, National Geographic and YOU Magazine.
During my years writing news, I covered the war in Iraq, the war in Kosovo (from Albania and Macedonia), 9/11 in New York, the Concorde Crash in Paris, the death of Princess Diana, the mass shooting of schoolchildren in Dunblane and a host of other major stories. I warned about big data mining a decade before it became a crisis, proved Britain's 'impregnable' ID cards and passports could be hacked and faked, and listened while Myra Hindley told me about the secret code she used to write letters to Ian Brady in prison.
While writing features, I took ayahuasca in the Amazon for The Times, followed a £10 note round the UK for The Guardian, and was threatened by Nicholas van Hoogstraten for uncovering the riches he hid after his murder trial. I watched as South African patients in a persistent vegetative state woke up after being given a sleeping pill; helped to free an innocent IRA 'bomber'; proved the Conservatives were taking foreign donations from heroin traffickers; and had airline safety law changed after the Lockerbie bombing.
I've written two books, Follow the Money and Gold Fever, that were each chosen as Book of the Week by BBC Radio 4. Follow the Money was also a Time Out Book of the Week. And I was once included in Time Out’s “Culture 100” list of the most creative and influential people in the UK media industry.
I co-directed the movie Follow the Money, which was named Best Documentary at the Louisville Film Festival, shortlisted for Best Documentary at the SoHo International Film Festival in New York, and commended in the LA Film Review Awards. It was released on Amazon Prime in November 2019.
I have also taught journalism at Goldsmiths and City, Universities of London.
Features and long form commissions welcomed gratefully at [email protected]
Some examples of my work are offered below, in no particular order.
It has been banned for decades but 1.5 million buildings in the UK still contain the lethal construction material. Why aren’t we doing more to get rid of it? Steve Boggan meets the victims
His alleged philanthropy isn't all it seems.
Tens of thousands of vulnerable people are being trafficked into Britain and forced to work in brothels, cannabis farms and car washes. Steve Boggan joins a specialist task force trying to free them from the gangs that control their lives.
British policing is in turmoil, with officers demoralised and forces beset by scandal. Steve Boggan joins them
It is the invisible killer lurking in 21,500 schools. It causes the deaths of more than 5,000 people a year — yet there is no plan for its removal. Today, The Sunday Times launches a campaign calling on the government to take action
Hundreds of thousands of children are missing school - will shaming their parents help? Steve Boggan investigates
More than 90 per cent of UK hospitals have asbestos - and a £10.2 billion backlog of maintenance means they're crumbling. Week 2 of our Act Now on Asbestos campaign
The US tech giant with links to the CIA is set to win a £480m contract to process our health records.
To bring offenders to justice, police officers must scrutinise hours of the most disturbing content. How do they cope?
When your husband is caught watching, who helps? The nightmarish world of the unseen victims.
Machetes, knives and swords can be legally bought online - so why have successive Home Secretaries done nothing about them? Steve Boggan investigates
J anice Allen met and fell in love with her husband, Stuart, when they worked together at Marks & Spencer’s flagship store in London’s Marble Arch. The shop would end up killing her
Five years ago Barbara Morris was diagnosed with cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.
Hannah Fletcher is dying from mesothelioma caused by asbestos in her makeup. She and her lawyers tell Steve Boggan the cosmetics industry has known for years that some talc is contaminated by potentially deadly asbestos
As Mark Zuckerberg announces his newly branded company is on a mission to create a 3D virtual reality for us to live in, Steve Boggan asks what it might look like and if it could be the end of the real world as we know it
James Howells has £107 million on a hard drive. The only problem is that he’s thrown the hard drive away. Will council officials let him and his crack team recover it from landfill? Steve Boggan reports
The Covid police state: 68,000 Britons have now been fined for lockdown breaches including a young man dragged out of bed by cops and an 82-year-old questioned for having tea in a garden
Behind the boozy garden-party headlines, a far more sinister game is afoot. Some chilling legislation has been making its way through parliament, designed to give the government authoritarian powers to strip Britons of basic freedoms. Steve Boggan reveals all
The rise of lethal plastic firearms that can be made by anyone at home with a £200 3D printer. Special investigation by Steve Boggan
Could AI that enables you to 'chat' with loved ones from beyond the grave ease your grief?
Phones, fridges, front door locks - devices from the 'internet of things' are easily hackable, risking not only your privacy but the security of you and your family.
It's a whodunnit on an international scale - Steve Boggan investigates
How could ‘the party of law and order’ have inflicted so much damage on the justice system, the police, the legal profession? Steve Boggan investigates
If there's another pandemic, the West could be dependent on China for vaccine development BY STEVE BOGGAN
Trillions are already being killed for food but there are no welfare rules as evidence emerges that insects can feel pain
Its clothes start at just £1 and yet it’s worth billions. Steve Boggan investigates how online outlet Shein became so ubiquitous – and who pays the real cost of its low prices.
'I can find out where you live' - Nicolas van Hoogstraten charms and threatens Steve Boggan
First newspaper eyewitness account of the fall of Baghdad
While planting trees can be good for all sorts of reasons, relying on tree-planting to save the planet might not be one of them – they may even do harm, reports Steve Boggan
They’re billed as luxury flats with everything from spas to cinemas. But spiralling fees mean they can take years to sell — and many get just a fraction of what was paid. Steve Boggan investigates
How Portugal won its fight against mass drug addiction. Steve Boggan reports from Lisbon
Holidays may be ahead but with the NHS app being used as the so-called vaccine passport, Steve Boggan asks if there is an ulterior motive
Many of the ‘things’ we buy have little regard for security and hacking is rising exponentially, explains Steve Boggan
MYRA HINDLEY is preparing for a bitter public battle with Ian Brady as part of high-risk legal moves to persuade the Court of Appeal to free her from jail. In a series of EXCLUSIVE interviews with Steve Boggan, she describes her relationship with Brady for the first time.
HINDLEY CLAIMS she remained silent about her treatment at the hands of Ian Brady because he was blackmailing her with letters she wrote to him in a secret code. She knows the letters' contents will add to the public perception of her as a callous and evil killer, but the discovery of photographs depicting the injuries Brady inflicted on her made her decide to go public.
Genetic genealogy caught the Golden State Killer - but is it ethical? Steve Boggan investigates
UN warns of Kosovo landmine death toll. Steve Boggan reports from Macedonia
The rubble - and human remains - being cleared from Ground Zero with kindness and sensitivity. Steve Boggan reports from New York
Long Read: A guide to online scams and how to avoid them
Andrew McCooey fought for the poor, dispossessed and unpopular. Steve Boggan on his remarkable career
A pounds 2BN EUROPEAN football super league would involve as many as 80 clubs, according to secret plans which show for the first time the scale of the soccer mutiny being planned.
Nineteen babies appear mysteriously in Kenya. Are they the work of God, miracle births? Or have they been stolen? And how is the man suspected of being the ringleader allowed to carry on preaching in Britain? From a south London church to an illegal clinic in Nairobi, Steve Boggan goes on the trail.
Every time you Tweet, search or stream, you're releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Steve Boggan investigates.
New microchipped passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft can be cloned and manipulated in minutes and accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports. Tests for The Times exposed security flaws in the microchips introduced to protect against terrorism and organised crime.
We cloned a baby's passport chip and replaced the baby's picture with Osama bin Laden's - and it was accepted as genuine by a passport reader.
As Rishi Sunak warns that unemployment could hit 2.6million by this time next year fraudsters are flooding the recruitment market with fake job advertisements. Steve Boggan investigates
Aside from the times when he worried that his children might never wake up at all, Jeff Brouse remembers the worst nights as the ones when they woke up screaming. Hot nights were the most frightening.
Sir Keir Starmer urged his party to undergo unconscious bias training but can it help us understand our own prejudices or is it just a corporate sticking plaster to cover up festering wounds? Steve Boggan reports
The IRA came for Jean McConville in the dead of night. Her daughter, Helen McKendry tells Steve Boggan she never saw her mother again
If you were to contract diphtheria today, you would be injected with an antitoxin made with blood from horses, many of which are kept in horrific conditions in India. Steve Boggan investigates
Records of secret donations to the Conservative Party are revealed for the first time today. Steve Boggan discloses how the party, then close to bankruptcy, raised millions of pounds over a frenzied four-month period, largely from 'anonymous' donors.
The Conservative Party received a pounds 1m donation from one of south- east Asia's most notorious drug smugglers, his family alleged yesterday. Steve Boggan and Anthony Bevins report the latest, and probably most damaging, instalment in the Tory funding controversy
Most of us have shared holiday snaps or posted pictures from a wedding on social media - how risky could it be? Very, discovers Steve Boggan
Supplements have had a hip makeover - they come in pretty jars and rainbow colours, promising everything from shiny hair to eternal youth. But they have an eye-watering price tag to match. So are they worth it? Steve Boggan investigates.
A MIST from Belfast Lough is smothering the city centre like wet cladding. Early shoppers bow their heads as if weighed down by the drizzle, while soldiers train rifles on them, taking imaginary potshots at imaginary terrorists.
Deep beneath Wiltshire lies an abandoned fortress, strewn with old bedding, rusting machinery and stationery marked 'top secret'. This is the Corsham bunker, where the nation's elite would have retreated in the event of nuclear war. Built at the height of cold war paranoia, it has since been left to crumble. So is the government still preparing for the worst? And would the rest of us have anywhere to shelter? Steve Boggan investigates
Lucid dreaming has become much more popular during lockdown. And people are eager to learn, control and prolong this dream state – but beware the charlatans, warns Steve Boggan
What do you do if you want to test the mood of a country as it emerges from the deepest recession for almost a century? You can delve into banking reports or believe what you hear from politicians. You can spend endless hours with academics and accountants or you can do what Steve Boggan did and 'follow the money'
When author Steve Boggan decided to fulfil a life-long ambition to follow a ten-dollar bill across the U.S, it took him on an epic and inspiring journey.
The Swiss claim giving junkies their fix on the state cuts crime, restores ruined lives and saves millions. Steve Boggan watches them shoot up in Zurich
Hackers have a reputation for sneaking around the internet stealing money and identities, even threatening national security. But the White Hats are hackers who spot security breaches and are a force for good
The crowd of mainly coca growers - or cocaleros - goes wild. There are easily 20,000 people from all over the tropical region of Chapare here to welcome the new president of Bolivia, their favourite son.
How do you fancy tucking into a bowl of ice cream that has no more fat than a carrot? Or eating a burger that will lower your cholesterol? If you are allergic to peanuts, perhaps you'd like to fix your food so that any nut traces pass harmlessly through your body.
The number of male babies born with reproductive disorders is rising, and some scientists blame a group of chemicals that are around us. Steve Boggan investigates
I am deep in the Amazon rainforest, anxiously losing my mind as the world begins to disintegrate. Around me, all sense of distance is wrapping itself up like spatial origami, slowly shrinking until an entire dimension has disappeared.
Steve Boggan on a Big Brother-style government super-database
It is our pleasure to inform you that Luke Rhinehart is dead,' read the message. 'He very much wanted us to tell you this as soon as possible so that you wouldn't be annoyed that he wasn't replying to your e-mails.
I'm kneeling in a cool stream panning for gold under a clear blue sky, washing away pay dirt layer by layer when I am suddenly dazzled by the sight of yellow flakes shining bright as a star. "Gold!" I yell. "It's gold!"
For thirty days and thirty nights three British filmmakers follow a ten dollar bill as it criss-crosses the United States. The bill passes through the hands of countless wonderful characters, and as the journey stretches out across 6,000 miles, a unique portrait of contemporary American life unfolds before us.
Gold fever - that crazy gleam in the eye some people get just thinking about finding a big chunk of gleaming metal. "Gold Fever" also happens to be the name of a new book, by the unlikeliest of prospectors - an Englishman named Steve Boggan. Here's his story.
Steve Boggan on the controversial Canadian treatment that could soon be given to UK sex offenders
When Clare Wood was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, a scheme was set up to allow women to see details of their partner's violent past. Six months on, Steve Boggan finds out if 'Clare's Law' is working
As gardai investigate the death of a Malawian woman whose headless body was found in Co Kilkenny, fears are rising that ritual killings may have arrived on our shores. Steve Boggan reports on Africa's muti murders ou can still see blood on the rocks that shaped the sly hiding place where they butchered Sello Chokoe.
You've had a hard day at the office and, as you step into your driverless car, sensors and facial recognition systems register that you are tired. You could do with a hot bath. Back home, your house springs into life. Your bath runs and will be at your preferred temperature by the time you arrive.
BY THE time Ricky Rodriguez telephoned his wife, Elixcia, on a cold Arizona evening last month, there was no doubt in his mind that he was going to kill himself. The only question was whether he would die alone.
This is the story of a piece of paper no bigger than a credit card, thrown away in a dustbin on the Heathrow Express to Paddington station. It was nestling among chewing gum wrappers and baggage tags, cast off by some weary traveller, when I first laid eyes on it just over a month ago.
An Iraqi colonel in the Iraqi internal security service today claims he has damning evidence directly linking Saddam Hussein to a series of horrific crimes against humanity. He has testified in chilling detail to witnessing thousands of innocent men, women and children being murdered by Saddam's henchmen and buried in mass desert graves.
When Nadia had finally had enough of being used, abused, sold for sex and brutalised day after day, she decided to stand up to her Albanian pimp - a man who saw her less as a human being than as a simple lucrative investment. It was the worst decision she ever made.
Gifted lawyer Robert Broudie, civil rights campaigner and champion of the underdog, leapt to his death from the top of Liverpool cathedral in October last year. It was the final act of a man full of promise but blighted by depression and anxiety. Steve Boggan charts the life and tragic death of a local hero.
I couldn't sleep the night after I asked Gene Meyers to go prospecting for gold with me. It wasn't the heat inside my tent or the rasp of a million cicadas that kept me awake. No, it was my conscience, a voice cooler than the evening and quieter than the insects.
John Kinsella was sentenced to 20 years for hiding explosives and weapons for an IRA gang. He has always pleaded his innocence - and now one of the real bombers may help prove he was telling the truth. Steve Boggan examines the evidence.
The internet has all but killed off the DVD side of the porn industry. But one man thinks he has found a novel way of reviving it. Steve Boggan gets a rare - and slightly awkward - peek behind the scenes.
During the frenzied debate over his plans for ballistic missile defence (BMD), President George Bush has come in for much criticism over his argument that the United States must defend itself against the threat posed by "rogue states". Who, it has been asked, are these rogues? Is he being overly paranoid?
We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent vegetative state - doctors can only make a sufferer's last days as painless as possible. But is that really the truth? Across three continents, severely brain-damaged patients are awake and talking after taking ... a sleeping pill.
AT first, the damaged children of Kosovo drew pictures of fairytale houses surrounded by picturebook flowers, images that surprised the aid workers who had been brought in to help them. ``We asked if this was their home, and a surprising number said, `No, this is the house we will go back to,''' said one of them.
I'm at a hot and sticky gig surrounded by groupies and the earth is moving slightly beneath my feet as complete strangers send me over cold beers and shots, catching my eye and nodding with raised glasses and smiles.
When British journalist Steve Boggan, author of Gold Fever: One Man's Adventures On The Trail Of The Gold Rush , swapped the comforts of London to become a gold prospector in the backwoods of California, he had few illusions of striking it rich.
Have you ever wondered what happens to your recycling? You've cleaned all the gloop out of your tins and plastic cartons, tried to muffle the guilty clinking of all those wine bottles and scrunched up the weekend supplements to create one of the densest objects in the universe.
Money-launderers and drug-dealers have discovered a new way to fool banks and fraud investigators; they use false identities and pretend to be from a fictitious country. Steve Boggan discovered how they are using their new scam all over the world - and how effective it can be.
It was a single word but it reminded a nation of grieving mourners that nothing they felt could eclipse the pain being endured by two young boys. It was the word "Mummy" and it was written on a wreath of white roses on top of the coffin of Diana, Princess of Wales.
Not until the end, when tears had been shed almost solidly for an hour at Westminster Abbey, did the full scale of the loss show itself in a seemingly never-ending procession of sadness.Children holding the hands of now-single parents; the elderly being propped up by their son or daughter's widowed partner; brothers, sisters looking fractured in their sorrow.
THE NIGHT Sol Angela Cartagena stumbled into a village clutching her bloody little girl's hand as tightly as the gaping wound in her belly, there was a whole host of people who simply didn't believe what she told them.
When Jenny Brown agreed to go undercover to investigate the testing of a rival to Botox on animals, she knew it might be unpleasant, but nothing had prepared her for this: highly trained lab technicians kneeling on the floor while they tried to break the necks of mice with a ballpoint pen.
Irene & Christian: Of all the tragic tales to emerge from the wreckage of Concorde flight number AF4590, few can be more poignant than that of this ordinary middle-aged couple from Dusseldorf. Because, for them, the trip that ended in disaster was supposed to be a celebration, against all the odds, of a life renewed...
TO WITNESS the rescue was like being present at a birth, and just as magical. For 46 hours, life for Evi Vassilopoulou had seemed nothing more than a distant hope.
Bank notes pass anonymously back and forth, of interest only while they're in our hands. Or maybe not. Steve Boggan trails one £10 note and ends up on a journey through modern British society
What do you do if you want to test the mood of a country as it emerges from the deepest recession for almost a century? You can delve into banking reports or believe what you hear from politicians. Or you can take the advice Bob Woodward was given by his Watergate source Deep Throat: "Follow the money.
Kevin Maxwell concealed a pounds 32m share transfer from Mirror Group pension fund officials which was later used to raise a pounds 22.5m loan for a private Maxwell company. Enquiries by The Independent have established that Kevin was instrumental in transferring the shares away from the funds, but he failed to tell fund administrators for more than 13 months that the shares had gone.
STEVE BOGGAN "I trusted him then as I trust him now," said Ian Maxwell as he stood outside the court, his arm round his brother's shoulder, eyes red from weeping. In the final analysis, that is what it had all come down to: trust.
AN 11-year-old Kosovo boy who watched as Serbs killed 19 of his relatives, including his mother and three sisters, has been re-united with his missing father. Dren Caka was also shot during the massacre at Djakovica on April 3 but escaped by pretending to be dead and then hiding in a smoke-filled room as the murderers tried to burn the evidence.
Millions of smartphone users and BT customers who use Wi-Fi wireless internet "hotspot" connections in public are vulnerable to fraud and identity theft, a Guardian investigation has established.
Father Stephen Langridge was minding his own business, walking down the road in South London, when a man approached him and began demanding cash. "I didn't want to give him money for more drink," says the Roman Catholic priest.
ON PAPER, Diana Bilinelli is one of the richest women in the world. Twenty years ago, an American judge issued an order demanding that her husband, a wealthy Saudi sheikh, hand over half his fortune as part of a legal separation.
Steve Boggan challenged web experts to see how much they could discover about his partner. The results were chilling.
This winter, they're the only thing to be seen in. Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren are selling designer versions, they've featured in glossy fashion magazines and they're flying off the shelves in stores like Benetton, Marks & Spencer and Gap.
56 years ago this week, the U.S. dropped the first two atomic bombs and the nuclear age was born. Now, we arewitnessing the birth of the militarization of space, the military's space age. On Monday, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Democracy Now!
smithsonianmag.com If you have ever wondered how California's modern-day rush for riches in Silicon Valley compares with the Gold Rush of 1849, look no further than the cost of buying a home.
As the sign says, it is the home of a United States space command squadron, a group of men and women whose job involves providing America with advance warning of airborne attack.