David E. Marchant is a USA-based, British journalist who is the owner and editor of OffshoreAlert, a news service and conference organizer that specialises in exposing serious financial crime while in progress. Marchant and/or OffshoreAlert have received several death threats and have been sued in several countries and jurisdictions, including state and federal court in the USA, Vancouver, Toronto, London, Panama, Grenada, and the Cayman Islands.
Early life and career
Marchant was born in 1965. His first journalistic job was as a news reporter for The Gwent Gazette in Ebbw Vale, Wales. He then worked as a reporter for the Bournemouth Evening Echo and the Western Daily Press of Bristol. From 1990 to 1993 he was a business reporter for The Royal Gazette in Bermuda and from 1994 to 1996 he was business editor at the Bermuda Sun.
''OffshoreAlert''
In 1997, Marchant founded OffshoreAlert, a newsletter that specialises in the exposure of international financial crime. In the course of his work he has been sued in the United States, the Cayman Islands, Canada and Panama. He was sued in Grenada by the former Prime MinisterKeith Mitchell. Marchant says he does not have insurance against libel cases in order not to have to approve his stories with lawyers before publishing them, and claims that "We’ve never lost a libel action, never published a correction or apology to any plaintiffs and never paid — or been required to pay — them one cent in costs or damages." Among the stories that Marchant has covered have been the Ponzi scheme at First International Bank of Grenada, fraud at the Cayman Islands-based Axiom Legal Financing Fund, and alleged irregularities at Belvedere Management group and a Spain-based investment group operating as Privilege Wealth. In 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that 11 people had been charged with crimes as a result of his work of which five had been jailed. The first person to sue Marchant was Marc Harris who was subsequently sentenced to 17 years in jail for money laundering and tax evasion. According to Marchant, he has received more than one death threat and the subject of one of his investigations had a T-shirt that read "David Marchant is only alive because killing him would be a crime". Marchant also runs annual conferences on financial intelligence and investigations.
