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Leo Sisti, Italy, is a reporter for the Italian newsweekly L'Espresso. In more than 30 years he has investigated corruption, financial crimes, mafia, politics, terrorism and organized crime.

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Sisti covered the so-called ‘clean hands’ investigation which lasted six years and was run by former prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro and other Milan magistrates to stamp out corruption in Italy. For his investigations into ‘clean hands’ cases, in 1966 Sisti was awarded the prestigious ‘Il Premiolino’ journalism prize. He revealed first that an off shore company used to bribe the late former Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, was owned by the current Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s family company. In September 1999, Sisti’s investigation of former Montenegrin Foreign Minister Branko Perovic’s cigarette smuggling links led to his resignation and prosecution in Naples. Perovic had allegedly exploited his diplomatic immunity as foreign minister to oversee the illicit import and distribution of black-market cigarettes into Montenegro and neighbouring countries. Perovic resigned the Foreign Ministry in December 1999. Sisti has co-authored six books, two of which were on bankruptcy-related scandals involving the Vatican and one investigating corruption in Italian soccer. In 2004 Sisti wrote his first solo book examining Al Qaeda’s financial dealings, entitled “Hunting Bin Laden -The sheik of terror.” In the summer of 2007 Sisti published a book on the Sicilian mafia, an account of how an Italian politician helped the “Corleonese” boss of bosses Bernardo Provenzano, captured in 2006 after 43 years on the run, build his criminal career. In 2000, Sisti joined ICIJ working later on cross-border investigations on tobacco, 9/11 and the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric carried out by the CIA.