How to investigate a billionaire

I don’t know what the cashier thought when they saw a sweat-drenched, frazzled man with messy hair and a broken shoulder bag rush through the door of the Ryman’s off Piccadilly Circus, desperate to print just two sheets of paper. It is London after all: we’re all used to a certain level of background insanity. But it was certainly a weird experience for me. 

Let me explain. It’s lunchtime on Friday 15 August, and the very next morning we’re set to publish my landmark investigation into billionaire London developer Asif Aziz. We had discovered that he not only wielded a network of offshore companies to control more of the land in this city than you’d ever expect, but was behind the closure and (often unlawful) redevelopment of dozens of historic pubs across the capital. For the last few days, we had tried almost everything short of carrier pigeons to discharge our legal obligations and prove that Aziz and his main company, Criterion Capital, had seen our story and had a chance to respond to it.

We were left with just one option: taking a letter outlining the details of the story in person to Criterion Capital’s swanky offices, just off Jermyn Street. As the minutes ticked away toward our deadline, I frantically rushed across the city to the nearby Ryman’s, printed off two sheets outlining the allegations in full, before stepping over the threshold into the almost deserted lobby. A slightly bemused concierge wasn’t as surprised to see me as I expected (I believe their exact remark was: “Oh, it’s you”). They then took the letter, held it for a moment as if to size it up, then carefully placed it on the opposite side of the desk, insisting it would be seen to. We had the all clear to publish. 

Exclusive: The billionaire developer closing London’s pubs

Companies linked to Asif Aziz have been buying up and shutting down some of the capital’s most beloved boozers. Now, we’ve mapped them.

The LondonerAndrew Kersley

In some ways, it couldn’t have ended any other way. Every step of that story — from trawling through press cuttings and corporate documents to map the various companies linked to Aziz to manually searching through hundreds of planning applications at each of London’s 33 local authorities — was a gargantuan effort of investigative journalism. All in all, it had already taken many days of solid work to get to the point where I could even hurriedly rush into a central London stationery shop desperate to print a right of reply letter. 

When it was published though, it became one of our biggest stories ever. And it really resonated with readers — after it was published, you sent me a tidal wave of tips that have seen me speaking to concerned publicans and other investigative journalists who have been tracking Aziz’s corporate empire. These conversations led to two follow up stories: one on another pub shuttered by Aziz in Greenwich and another investigation into the developer Linea Homes, which has claimed to save the capital’s pubs but has shut almost 30 (leading to the on-going fight to save the award-winning Trafalgar in south London).

I think the reason why so many people reacted the way they did was because they, like us, understood how rare this kind of journalism is. We live in a sea of never-ending content — more news than ever before, in more formats than people could dream of even a couple of decades ago. But the economics of the industry, which incentivise creating as much content as possible to stand out in search or social media algorithms and drive up ad revenues, mean deep investigative journalism is rarer than it’s ever been. It’s no coincidence that despite headlines about Aziz’s propensity for shutting central London institutions and despite his involvement in pubs being far from a secret, no outlet had taken the time to actually map and investigate his web of companies and their impact on the capital’s nightlife.

Which is very convenient for wealthy developers like Aziz or Linea Homes. Using opaque land registry details, complex planning bureaucracy and webs of overseas companies, they’re confident they can keep their operations, which literally shape the city to their benefit, invisible. Why wouldn’t they be? After all, investigative journalism has largely disappeared from traditional local news outlets. The new model, which prioritises clicks to generate ad revenue, is much more interested in grabbing attention than putting in the hard yards to really get deep into things.

But at The Londoner, we’ve made the bet that a lot of people are frustrated with that status quo. And it’s beginning to look like we weren’t completely mad to do so. We’ve now got almost 20,000 Londoners receiving our e-mails. And 880 of you have taken it a step further, and done the thing that allows us not to tread the dreaded clickbait path: supporting us, not just with warm words but with hard cash. That money pays for us to do thorough investigations, rent our tiny Pimlico office and pay our freelancers a proper fee for their work.

Our first birthday is at the end of the month. We launched with a statement of intent: an investigation into the serious concerns about a children’s care home being run out of Jas Athwal MP’s properties. Since then, we’ve investigated many of the darker sides to London, alongside beautiful pieces about London’s culture and many strange diversions along the way. We hope you can see how we’re trying to revitalise the local journalism scene and fill the gap left by the capital’s bigger titles scaling back their ambition.

But, to be frank, 880 subscribers is nowhere near enough. We’re still comfortably running at a loss. And with more support, we can take on even bigger stories in our second year. So we’re setting a big, ambitious goal — to get to 1,000 paying subscribers before we hit our first birthday, in just 15 days’ time.

That means 120 of you taking the plunge, and putting a little bit of cash behind our intrepid team. Of course, it’s a two way street. Paying members get more of our stuff, as a thanks for their support. But you’ll also know that you’re backing the people trawling through council planning documents for hours on end and thrusting documents into the hands of unimpressed receptionists, because we’ll do what it takes to get the important stories. Join now and, when The Londoner is employing dozens of journalists, and politicians and property moguls the city over live in terror of its scrutiny, you can say you backed us from the start. After all, “I joined them in year two” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

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