About Us

Oliver Schröm, born in 1964, began his journalistic career at the age of 19 as a freelance contributor for the Aalener Volkszeitung (then a local edition of the Schwäbische Zeitung), where he published his first investigative reports. For the local paper, he uncovered an environmental scandal in his hometown and reported on backroom dealing in the municipal council over the awarding of construction contracts.

In 1987, Schröm completed a traineeship at the Heidenheimer Zeitung, where he again attracted attention for his elaborate investigations and exposés. Together with his fellow trainee Stefan Scheytt, he followed the trail of a criminal bus operator all the way to Mexico City. For this investigation, both received a journalism prize, along with a fellowship in the United States. There they worked at the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, the Los Angeles Times, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

After completing his traineeship, Schröm worked as a freelance journalist and in 1995, together with the renowned television journalist Egmont R. Koch, published his first exposé book about a Catholic elite order with connections to the far right and the Mafia.

For the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and the ZDF magazine Kennzeichen D, he unmasked spies, terror cells, and neo-Nazi networks. In 2007, Schröm joined the magazine Stern, where in 2010 he built one of Germany's first investigative teams. With his team, he exposed match-fixing in professional football, documented the connections between rapper Bushido and organized crime, and in 2014 tracked down the Panama account of then-CDU treasurer Helmut Linssen.

From 2013, Schröm investigated and reported for more than a decade on the cum-ex trades of German financial players and banks — the largest tax heist in postwar history. He exposed investments by financial figures such as Carsten Maschmeyer and highlighted the entanglement of Olaf Scholz in the cum-ex affair surrounding Germany's largest private bank.

In 2016, Schröm moved to the ARD magazine Panorama. In addition to the cum-ex topic, he covered the so-called 'cancer mafia', corruption cases, and criminal activities of oncologists and pharmacists.

From 2018, he spent two years as editor-in-chief of the non-profit investigative center Correctiv, which he had co-founded with David Schraven. There he oversaw several international investigative cooperations, above all the 'CumEx-Files', a consortium of 19 European media outlets. The revelations from this cooperation caused a sensation across Europe and led to the establishment of an inquiry committee in the European Parliament.

At the end of 2019, Schröm returned to Panorama and published two more books, most recently 'Die Akte Scholz. Der Kanzler, das Geld und die Macht' (together with Oliver Hollenstein). The exposé book led to an 'Aktuelle Stunde' (emergency debate) in the Bundestag just three days after publication, during which members of parliament intensively debated the aspects of the cum-ex scandal raised in the book.

Since 2023, Schröm has been working again as a freelance journalist and as a television and book author.

Schröm was a founding member and later chairman for four years of the journalists' association Netzwerk Recherche. For his investigations, he has received — partly together with cooperation partners — around two dozen national and international awards, including the Otto Brenner Prize, the Stern Prize, and the German Television Award.

Schröm also knows the flip side of investigative journalism: he has frequently become a target himself after his exposés. In addition to numerous press law disputes, he has repeatedly come under scrutiny from state authorities. In the mid-1990s, the Munich public prosecutor's office opened proceedings against him after he unmasked several CIA agents conducting economic espionage in Germany. In connection with his research into the cum-ex deals of the Swiss private bank Sarasin, the Zurich public prosecutor's office also investigated him for years on charges of economic espionage.

In 2018, Swiss authorities transferred the case to the Hamburg public prosecutor's office, which investigated Schröm for incitement to betray business and trade secrets. Only after public pressure — tens of thousands of citizens had expressed solidarity with him and signed a petition — were the proceedings dropped.

Ulrich Thiele, born in 1990, completed a voluntary social year in South Africa after school and went on to study literature, art history, and cultural studies in Konstanz, Hamburg, and Lüneburg. He took his first journalistic steps during university at a Hamburg local newspaper and as an intern at the political magazine Cicero. He worked for several years as an editor at the city magazine Szene Hamburg, where he headed the literature and theater sections, before completing a traineeship at Cicero that included a guest placement with Oliver Schröm. From June 2023, he spent two years as an investigative reporter at Business Insider Deutschland.

During his traineeship — alongside investigations into the cum-ex affair involving Olaf Scholz and the Federal Admission Programme for Afghanistan — he began his research into Nord Stream 2 and the Climate and Environmental Protection Foundation in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. His revelations led to the establishment of a parliamentary inquiry committee in Schwerin.

He uncovered the so-called 'Fireplace Gate' surrounding a presumably politically influenced tax audit. In 2022, his research revealed that the foundation established by Minister President Manuela Schwesig owed 10 million euros in gift tax for a Gazprom donation. A year later, he revealed that a tax official had burned the tax returns in a fireplace.

In 2023, he exposed the 'Deletion Affair', which brought to light that Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Interior Minister Christian Pegel had deleted email communications before the establishment of the inquiry committee. Pegel justified his actions by claiming he needed to save storage costs.

In 2024, he revealed that Manuela Schwesig had intervened in a supposedly independent legal opinion on the dissolution of the Climate Foundation, thereby preventing the foundation's dissolution.

In February 2025, his book 'Nord Stream. How Germany Financed Putin's War', co-authored with Steffen Dobbert, was published by Klett-Cotta. The book reveals how German politicians (including Gerhard Schröder, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Angela Merkel, Manuela Schwesig, Erwin Sellering, and Sigmar Gabriel) worked behind the scenes for years using dubious methods, against vehement warnings from the US and Eastern Europe, to promote the Nord Stream pipelines and drove Germany into dependence on Russian gas — supported by Russian networks and influential lobbyists. Authorities were pressured, safety standards lowered, environmental pollution by the Gazprom corporation covered up, and political proximity to the Kremlin prioritized. The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote: 'The book reads like a thriller, the level of detail is high, and right up to the very end the two authors refrain from almost any judgement. Nor is that necessary — the mere description of events speaks for itself. […] The facts meticulously and well-documented in this book should really be present in any discussion about future cooperation with Russia.'

The book reached number 2 on the Spiegel bestseller list.

Alongside his journalistic work, he volunteers at a hospice. From 2021 to 2022, he completed training as a bereavement counsellor for children, young people, and families.