Publications – Mike Lewis

Research reports, briefings, and longer pieces

	SIPRI, Post-shipment On-site Inspections and Stockpile Management Assistance: Bridging Gaps (Aug 2022) Co-author with Giovanna Maletta. How can governments verify that weapons they have exported haven't been diverted? New practices and technologies drawing on experiences of weapons verification and stockpile management in Somalia, Nigeria, Iraq and elsewhere.		CICTAR, CFDT, CGT, Prendre Soin Des Personnes Ou Soigner Ses Profits? (Feb 2022) Investigation of Europe's largest for-profit care home company: offshore property speculation and its effects on funds for care and staff. French/English versions.
	Conflict Armament Research, Weapons of the War in Ukraine (Nov 2021) Contributor. Field study of weapons supply chains to Russian-backed separatists. Including the use of procurement fronts in EU countries, EU/US components in Russian military UAVs, evidence of defence industry asset stripping in Donbass.		Conflict Armament Research, Weapon Supplies Into South Sudan's Civil War (Nov 2018) Four years of field research and investigation. South Sudan's neighbours supplying arms while sponsoring peace talks; new ammunition at massacre sites; offshore companies run by former associates of Victor Bout; oil companies shipping military cargo.
	Christian Aid Ireland, Abbott Briefing Note (Nov 2021) Tax whack-a-mole: how a pharmaceutical giant got around yet more half-hearted Irish anti-avoidance legislation to shelter their pandemic superprofits from tax. Irish Times coverage here.		Scottish Trades Union Congress, Profiting from care: why Scotland can't afford privatised social care (June 2022) Co-author. The Scottish government plans a 'provider-neutral' National Care Service. Yet data show private care homes pay their staff less, spend more on non-care costs (rents, loans, profits and directors' fees), and get more complaints of substandard care.
	Conflict Armament Research, Red Flags and Choke Points (Dec 2020) Mapping the human and financial networks behind Islamic State procurement for its weapons production programme in Iraq and Syria. UK front companies, pseudonymous communications, proxy purchasers. Plus previously unknown IS efforts to build V1-style jet-powered UAVs and AI-driven anti-aircraft systems. Storymap.		*UK personnel supporting the Saudi Armed Forces - Risk, Knowledge and Accountability* (April 2018) What do UK contractors actually do; what does the UK government know about what they do; what are the legal, physical, professional risks and rewards of their work? (Part of the 'Brits Abroad' project). Medium summary here (7 minute read).
	Conflict Armament Research, Nigeria's Herder-Farmer Conflict (Jan 2020) A three-year field project in northern and Middle Belt Nigeria tracking international sources of weapons into West Africa's most lethal conflict, trafficked from Cote d'Ivoire, Libya, Turkey and elsewhere. Case study storymap here. Data dashboard here,		Sudan Human Security Baseline Assessment, Lifting U.S. Sanctions on Sudan: Rationale and Reality (May 2018) How key Sudanese regime functions evaded U.S. sanctions; and how their lifting (despite fine, careful State Department diplomacy) has reinforced the Sudanese government's strategy to end periphery conflicts by force rather than negotiation.
	ActionAid Zambia/ActionAid UK, Sweet Nothings: the human cost of a British sugar giant avoiding taxes in southern Africa (Feb 2013) Multi-country investigation into the tax practices of a UK-headquartered multinational food company in Zambia, South Africa, Ireland, Mauritius, the Netherlands and the UK.		Christian Aid Ireland, Global Linkages (Nov 2017) A critical review of the data and assumptions used by the Irish government to give an 'all-clear' to the poverty impact of its tax system in 2015.
	Conflict Armament Research, Enquête sur les transferts d'armes transfrontaliers dans le Sahel (Nov 2016) Co-author. Fieldwork in eight countries. Revising the view that Libya is the only significant source of arms for Sahelian armed groups. Plus connections between ISIS- and AQIM-aligned groups' rifles. Also in English.		Sudan Human Security Baseline Assessment, Broken Promises: the arms embargo on Darfur since 2012 (July 2016). Updating our 2012 examination of the (inoperative) arms embargo on Darfur. More violations, plus an evaluation of mythical donor-supported disarmament in West and South Darfur, and the UN Security Council's closed-door paralysis. Explanatory blog here.
	Sudan Human Security Baseline Assessment, Commercial Actors in the Sudanese Armed Forces' supply chains (July 2016) Naming the transnational set of companies -- from Athens to Pulkovo -- that sustain air warfare and ground warfare supply chains in Darfur and South Kordofan.		Conflict Armament Research, Groupes Armés Non Étatiques en République Centrafricaine: types et sources d’armes et de munitions identifiées (Jan 2015) Co-author. Includes evidence of arms and European military vehicles supplied to Séléka forces by Sudan, and new European ammunition reaching anti-Balaka fighters via West Africa. Also in English.
	Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke, Denmark's Tax Treaties - Time for Change (Nov 2014) Reviewing the potential fiscal disadvantages generated for Majority World countries by Denmark's tax treaty network.		'Enforcement', chapter in Clare da Silva & Brian Wood (eds.), Weapons and International Law: the Arms Trade Treaty (Editions Larcier: Aug 2015) Co-author with Joël Sollier (director of legal affairs, Interpol) and Rosella Mangion. Legal and practical analysis of states' parties obligations.
	38 Degrees, Getting Serious (Feb 2015) Analysis of UK tax breaks for private equity fund managers, including estimates of the UK exchequer impact of treating fund managers' 'carried interest' income as capital gains.		ActionAid, Responsible Tax Practice by Companies: A Mapping and Review of Current Proposals (March 2015) An attempt to answer the question, "What do tax campaigners want companies to do, and why can't they agree?"
	ActionAid, How Tax Havens Plunder the Poor (May 2013) Campaign briefing on the fiscal costs to Majority World countries of FDI flows via tax havens.		Small Arms Survey / Conflict Armament Research, Small Arms Ammunition documented at Bentiu mosque (May 2014) Co-author. Field examination of ammunition used in the massacre by SPLA-IO forces of some 200 people in the Kali-ballee mosque, Bentiu, South Sudan, on 15 April 2014. Includes documentation of 2014-manufactured Sudanese ammunition revealing recent supply to rebel forces since the start of the conflict.
	Oxfam International, Whose Aid is it Anyway? (Feb 2011) Have aid donors' security and military objectives, particularly since 2001, skewed the distribution of development aid and damaged the effectiveness of humanitarian action? (Summary: yes, a bit)		Amnesty International, South Sudan: overshadowed conflict (June 2012) Documentation of human rights violations and unlawful weapons use in fighting between SPLA and SSLA forces in Mayom County, South Sudan.
	Amnesty International, Guinée : Les événements du 28 septembre 2009 au stade de Conakry (March 2010) Co-author. Human rights documentation of 2009 Conakry stadium massacre; investigation of weapons used and foreign mercenaries engaged to train CNDD youth militia. Also in English.		Amnesty International / IPIS / Transarms, Transportation Controls in the Arms Trade Treaty (July 2010) Case studies - loopholes in transportation regulations facilitating illicit and destabilising international arms transfers.
	SIPRI, ISIS Europe, University of Bradford (CICS), The Control of Air Transportation of Small Arms and Light Weapons and Munitions: A Comparative Study of National Systems Utilised in the European Union (March 2009) Co-author.		Small Arms Survey / Sudan Human Security Baseline Assessment, Skirting the Law: Sudan's post-CPA arms flows (Oct 2009) Mapping the supply chain of weapons flows to Sudan's armed forces and the SPLA (including an investigation of 2006-9 Ukrainian/German maritime arms shipments). Also in Arabic.
	Global Tax Evasion, Social Watch Report 2006: Impossible Architecture (Sept 2006)		The personal equation: political economy and social technology on India’s canals, 1850-1930, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 41, 5 (Sept 2007) Non-public access (journal article). How colonial civil servants denied farmers water by pretending that only white people could do astronomy.
	Small Arms Survey (Sudan Human Security Baseline Assessment), Arms Flows to Darfur, 2009-12 (Sept 2012)		Conflict Armament Research, The Distribution of Iranian Ammunition in Africa (Dec 2012) Contributor. The first public exposé of the growing prevalence of Iranian-made weapons and ammunition in African conflicts, including from transfers violating the reverse UN embargo on Iran. My inputs included fieldwork in South Sudan and Guinea.
	Oxfam International / ActionAid / Christian Aid, Getting to Good: Towards responsible corporate tax behaviour (Nov 2015). "What should CFOs do?" A new, propositional corporate tax policy framework developed in conjunction with development NGOs and large MNCs, and focussed on tax behaviour in Majority World countries.		Christian Aid Ireland, Impossible Structures (Nov 2017) Ireland's role as a conduit for tax-free income flows, and identifying for the first time the successor structure to the "double Irish"
	Conflict Armament Research, New Sudanese Weapons in Blue Nile State (Apr 2017) Preliminary field notes of new acquisitions by Africa's most diffuse weapons proliferator. Iranian heavy weapons, European military trucks via Sudanese front companies.		Conflict Armament Research, Weapons of the Islamic State (Dec 2017) Contributor. Helped document IS weapons production in Mosul, from HME to improvised chemical grenades; and supported CAR's investigations of the commercial supply chains and air/sea logistics of the arms and commodities pipelines from Europe to Syria which have fuelled IS' military production and procurement. Also in Arabic.
	Christian Aid UK, Questionable Values (Feb 2018) Rebutting the 2017 lobbying report by BVI Finance and Capital Economics, which claimed that BVI companies did not sustain illicit activity and contribute positively to global economic development.