TruthTime Foundation Investigate · Illuminate · Inform
01About 02What we do 03Why we exist 04Areas of interest 05Selected work 06People & funding 07Where we work →Secure tip line
An independent investigative consortium

We follow the record wherever it leads.

TruthTime Foundation is a non-profit newsroom of investigative journalists and forensic researchers. We surface what powerful interests would rather keep buried — then put the evidence in the hands of reporters the world over.

Established 2011Hausmannsgate 21, 0182 Oslo
Structure Philanthropic non-profitStiftelse · 501(c)(3) equivalent
Bureaus FourOslo · Geneva · Singapore · Sydney
Network 240+ partnersAcross 71 countries
01
Who we are

A standing capacity for the kind of journalism that no longer pays for itself.

Cross-border investigation is slow, costly and adversarial. A single story can take two years, span a dozen jurisdictions and outlast the budget of any one newsroom. TruthTime Foundation exists to carry that burden — to hold the time, the methods and the legal cover that long-form accountability reporting demands, and to share the result rather than hoard it.

We are not a publisher. We do not chase the scoop or sell the audience. We build the evidentiary picture — documents, data, financial trails, on-the-record testimony — and we hand it, verified and source-protected, to the journalists and outlets best placed to bring it to their public. The byline belongs to them; the standard of proof belongs to us.

Our staff are forensic accountants, data engineers, OSINT analysts, lawyers and career reporters. Our partners are national broadcasters, regional dailies and independent newsrooms on six continents. What binds them is a single discipline: nothing is published that the record cannot carry.

14 yrs
Continuous operation since 2011
240+
Partner newsrooms & reporters
71
Countries with published work
100%
Philanthropically & publicly funded
02
What we do

Three disciplines, in sequence.

Our method is named in our seal. We investigate until the record is complete, we illuminate the structure others were never meant to see, and we inform the public through the newsrooms they already trust.

Stage oneInvestigate

Establish the record

We start from primary sources: corporate filings, leaked datasets, court records, satellite and shipping data, and human testimony gathered under protection. Every claim is traced to a document or a named witness before it advances.

  • Document & data acquisition
  • Forensic financial analysis
  • Source protection & verification
Stage twoIlluminate

Assemble the big picture

Isolated facts rarely tell the story. We map the ownership ladders, the money flows and the network of people and institutions behind an issue — turning a thousand fragments into a structure that can be understood, and defended in print.

  • Network & ownership mapping
  • Cross-jurisdiction synthesis
  • Legal & factual hardening
Stage threeInform

Reach the public

We brief our partner newsrooms, share the full evidence file, and coordinate simultaneous publication across borders so that the story lands where it matters — in the languages and outlets of the people it affects most.

  • Partner briefing & data hand-off
  • Coordinated cross-border release
  • Public evidence archive
03
Why we exist

Accountability has a market failure. We are the correction.

The economics of journalism collapsed faster than its importance. Local newsrooms closed; foreign bureaus were shuttered; the reporters who once spent a year on a single story were asked to file three a day. The work that holds power to account — slow, expensive, legally exposed — was the first thing the market stopped paying for, precisely when opaque cross-border power grew most sophisticated.

That gap is not an abstraction. It is the unexamined contract, the offshore shell, the captured regulator, the quiet pollution of a river that no one is left to watch. TruthTime Foundation was endowed to keep watching — to make the most difficult journalism a public good again, funded by those who believe an informed public is worth more than the story is worth to any single buyer.

A fact that no one can afford to find is, for all practical purposes, a secret.
From the founding charter, Oslo · 2011
04
Areas of interest

Where opacity and public consequence meet.

A—01

Illicit finance & offshore

Shell structures, beneficial-ownership concealment, sanctions evasion and the professional enablers who engineer them.

A—02

State capture & corruption

Procurement fraud, kleptocratic networks and the quiet conversion of public institutions into private instruments.

A—03

Environmental crime

Illegal extraction, deforestation, waste trafficking and the financing chains that launder ecological harm into clean profit.

A—04

Surveillance & digital harm

The commercial spyware trade, data brokerage and the export of repression technology to states that hunt their own citizens.

A—05

Organised crime

Transnational trafficking — narcotics, arms, people and wildlife — and the licit economy that quietly absorbs the proceeds.

A—06

Corporate accountability

Supply-chain abuse, regulatory capture, product harm and the gap between what corporations disclose and what they do.

A—07

Public health & safety

Suppressed safety data, fraudulent trials and the commercial interests that trade in delay when lives are the cost.

A—08

Disinformation networks

Coordinated influence operations, dark money in politics and the infrastructure manufacturing consent at scale.

A—09

Conflict & war economies

The commodity flows, financiers and logistics that fund armed conflict and profit from its continuation.

05
Selected work

Investigations we built and the newsrooms that carried them.

EX—HY / 001
Embargoed
Cross-border · automotive sector
Investigation

A four-part cross-border investigation into a major automotive group's concealed ownership structure and a suppressed safety record behind its export drive — released simultaneously across partner outlets.

Public broadcaster · AUInvestigative weekly · EUData desk · SG
2026
9 outlets
4 languages
Parliamentary inquiry opened
EX—NS / 014
Illicit finance · 18-month inquiry
Investigation

Traced a Nordic resource-sector empire through eleven offshore layers to politically exposed owners — exposing a beneficial-ownership loophole later closed by statute in two jurisdictions.

National daily · NOPublic radio · ISWire service
2023
Law reform
2 jurisdictions
€140m frozen
EX—RV / 007
Environmental crime · satellite + financial
Investigation

Combined shipping transponder data, satellite imagery and trade records to document the laundering of illegally felled hardwood through a chain of intermediary ports into European markets.

Magazine · DENGO data consortiumRegional press · SE Asia
2021
3 prosecutions
Import ban
Trade route closed
EX—GL / 022
Surveillance · digital forensics
Investigation

Reconstructed the export trail of a commercial spyware vendor, identifying state clients that had deployed it against journalists and opposition figures across three continents.

Security research labBroadsheet · CHPress-freedom NGO
2019
Export licence revoked
UN submission
11 targets notified
06
Who is behind us

Endowed to be independent — and built to prove it.

TruthTime Foundation was established in 2011 with a permanent endowment seeded by a group of private philanthropic foundations and family trusts — donors who had made their money in shipping, software and energy, and who wanted accountability journalism to outlive any one news cycle, government or proprietor.

The endowment is the point. By funding the work from returns rather than annual appeals, no single donor can switch us off, steer a story or buy our silence. Grants are pooled, capped, and disclosed; reporting decisions sit with the newsroom alone.

We accept no government core funding, no corporate sponsorship, and no anonymous gifts above a published threshold. Every funder is listed in our annual report, audited by an independent firm and bound by a written grant agreement that explicitly forfeits any editorial say.

The independence firewall
No funder reviews our work
Funders never see stories before publication and hold no veto, on any subject — including their own interests.
No single donor exceeds 12%
A hard cap on any one funder's share of annual income, enforced by the board and disclosed publicly.
Endowment, not appeals
Core operations run on investment returns, insulating the newsroom from donor pressure and economic cycles.
Open books
Audited accounts, the full funder list and our governance charter are published every year.
Stiftelsen Klarsyn
Founding endowment · Oslo
A Norwegian charitable foundation built from shipping-family capital; provided the initial endowment and remains a capped contributor.
The Helvetia Open Trust
Core grant · Geneva
A Swiss philanthropic trust supporting press freedom and the rule of law across borders.
Meridian Fund for Public Knowledge
Programme grants · Singapore
Funds open-data and investigative capacity across the Asia–Pacific; supports our regional bureau.
Individual & reader gifts
Unrestricted · global
Thousands of small, named contributions — collectively our most fiercely protected source of independence.
Greta Aalstad
Greta Aalstad
Executive Director
Hassan Mehra
Hassan Mehra
Editor-in-Chief
Lena Wirtz
Lena Wirtz
Head of Forensics & Data
Jonas Berg
Jonas Berg
Research Analyst
Aisha Rahman
Aisha Rahman
Research Associate
Mats Lunde
Mats Lunde
Data Analyst
Clara Jensen
Clara Jensen
Communications Officer
Arjun Patel
Arjun Patel
Outreach Coordinator
Maya Chen
Maya Chen
Policy Analyst
Margaret Osei
Margaret Osei
Chair of the Board
Erik Solheim
Erik Solheim
Board Chair
Ingrid Skrede
Ingrid Skrede
Governance Advisor
Lars Møller
Lars Møller
Audit Committee Chair
07
Where we work

Four bureaus, one standard of proof.

Oslo
Norway · HQ
Founding bureau and registered seat. Houses the endowment, governance and the Nordic and European finance desk.
Hausmannsgate 21
0182 Oslo
59.91°N · 10.75°E
Geneva
Switzerland
Legal, source-protection and human-rights desk; liaison with multilateral institutions and press-freedom bodies.
46.20°N · 6.14°E
Singapore
Asia–Pacific
Regional hub for trade, shipping and supply-chain investigations across Southeast Asia and the wider Pacific.
1.35°N · 103.82°E
Sydney
Australia
Resources, environmental and political-finance desk; coordination point for partner broadcasters in the region.
33.87°S · 151.21°E
Confidential · encrypted

Hold a document the public should see?

We protect our sources before, during and after publication. Reach us through an encrypted channel — and tell us nothing you don't have to until we've agreed how to protect you.

How we work with sources
Signal · end-to-end encrypted
Signal QR code for @TruthTime.01
Scan to chat on Signal
@TruthTime.01

Open Signal on your phone, tap the camera icon and scan this code. Use a device that isn't tied to your work identity where possible.

Email · Proton Mail · end-to-end encrypted
Encrypted desk address
investigation-desk@truthtime.org

Sent through Proton Mail's encrypted infrastructure. If you also use Proton Mail, your message is end-to-end encrypted; otherwise we recommend pairing email with Signal for sensitive material.