David Leigh is a journalist, author and documentary filmmaker. He is currently the Investigations Editor at The Guardian and has been one of the UK’s best-known investigative journalists since the 1970s.
He started work as reporter for The Scotsman, followed by The Times and later as a Laurence Stern fellow at the Washington Post. He then went on to join the Observer and became its chief investigative reporter and associate Investigations editor.
During his career he has broken many high-profile stories including the recent Guardian investigation into the dumping of toxic waste in the Côte d’Ivoire by the trading multinational Trafigura.
He famously investigated BAE Systems, revealing that the arms company paid £1 billion to Saudi prince Bandar. Government minister Jonathan Aitken was jailed following David’s investigations and BAE’s arms sales are now under criminal inquiry by the US department of justice.
He has authored a number of critically acclaimed books including; Sleaze: the corruption of Parliament, The Liar: The fall of Jonathan Aitken, The Wilson Plot and many others.
His documentary films include; “Death Smugglers of Baghdad”, “Britain’s Cocaine Mercenaries”, “Hitler’s Children” and the infamous “Jonathan of Arabia”, the film that lead Aitken’s jailing.
David received the Paul Foot award for his investigation into bribery at BAE (2007), the ‘What the papers Say’ Investigative Journalist of the Year award in 2007, the Transparency International Integrity Award (2008), as well as a number of British Press Awards.
In 2006, he became the United Kingdom’s first professor of reporting at City University London. He is also a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists based in Washington DC.
At the 2007 summer school, David Leigh gave a talk about how he went about investigating the BAE story – the BAE files.