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 began as reporter for The Scotsman, The Times and later as a Laurence Stern fellow at the Washington Post. He then joined 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 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. After being the subject of criminal inquiries in the US, BAE has now admitted to crimes connected with the arms sales to Saudi Arabia, central Europe and Tanzania, and is to pay fines totaling $400m in the US and £30m in the UK. Government minister Jonathan Aitken was jailed following a separate investigation in the 1990s, into other Saudi arms deals Aitken was involved in whilst a minister.
Leigh 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.
At the 2007 summer school, David Leigh gave a talk about how he went about investigating the BAE story – the BAE files