Pierre Romera Zhang

Pierre Romera Zhang has been Chief Technology Officer at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 2017. He manages a team working on the platforms that enabled more than hundreds journalists to collaborate on the Pandora Papers, the Uber Files, the FinCEN Files, or the Panama Papers. Before that, he co-founded Journalism++, the franco-German data journalism agency behind The Migrant Files, a project that won the European Press Prize in 2015 for Innovation. He is one of the pioneers of data journalism in France.

Twitter: @pirhoo

Registration now open – UNCOVERED 2023

We are delighted to announce that registration is now open for UNCOVERED 2023!

Returning for a fourth year, UNCOVERED is the annual conference of the IJ4EU programme and an opportunity for you to network with and learn from Europe’s leading cross-border investigative journalists. 

This year’s conference will take place in Brussels on 12 and 13 October. It’s an opportunity to showcase the best investigative journalism Europe has to offer and to discuss the challenges faced by those working to shine a light on cross-border crime and corruption. The conference is organised by ECPMF, together with the International Press Institute (IPI) and European Journalism Centre (EJC), and funded by the European Commission.

Click here to secure your place at our annual conference for cross-border investigative journalism. Places at the conference are limited so act fast to seal your participation! 

If you have any questions or issues with registration, reach out to us at deniz.bozkurt-pekar@ecpmf.eu. For all the latest updates on the conference, keep an eye on ECPMF’s Twitter profile and the UNCOVERED

Published
Categorized as Allgemein

Announcing the winners of the 2023 IJ4EU Impact Award

Investigations on topics as diverse as corruption in sports, illegal “pushbacks” of refugees and the mass internment of Uyghurs in China have won equal honours at the IJ4EU Impact Award, the annual prize of the Investigative Journalism for Europe fund.

Three teams of journalists shared the limelight on Friday at a special ceremony for Europe’s only award devoted exclusively to cross-border investigative journalism. In no particular order, the investigations selected by an independent jury were:

Each team gets €5,000. The jury chose the winners from a shortlist of nominations made by independent evaluators assembled by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), which runs the award in cooperation with IJ4EU partners the International Press Institute (IPI) and the European Journalism Centre (EJC).

Another investigation, Peat Pressure, received an honourable mention.

Ahead of the award ceremony on 31 March, the ECPMF team spoke to the winners about their projects, the work that went into each investigation, and the challenges they overcame along the way. Follow the links below to hear from this year’s winners.

IJ4EU Devil in the Data

The first prize of the evening went to a team of freelancers — Andy Brown, Philippe Auclair, Steve Menary and Jack Kerr — for their undercover investigation, The Devil Is in the Data, which reveals how live data fed to the sports betting industry can create a fertile ground for match-fixing.

Read the interview here.

IJ4EU Xinjiang Police Files

Next to be honoured were the journalists behind The Xinjiang Police Files. Carried out by a team of independent outlets brought together by German news site Der Spiegel, the investigation provides an unprecedented look behind China’s veil of secrecy by attaching names and faces to a brutal system that has locked away a million Uyghurs in internment camps.

Read the interview here.

Unmasking Europe’s Shadow Armies was led by Lighthouse Reports, a Dutch non-profit that works with newsrooms across Europe. It gives the most detailed picture yet of a previously deniable campaign of illegal, violent “pushbacks” in Croatia, Greece and Romania by exposing the mysterious men in masks who beat asylum seekers at Europe’s borders.

Read the interview with reporters behind the project here.

Honourable mention went to “Peat Pressure, an investigation by Irish investigative organisation Noteworthy that exposes a system of unregulated peat extraction and how two multi-million-euro horticultural peat companies have extracted it without consent and in breach of EU environmental law.

Read the interview with journalist Juris Jurāns here.


You can watch a full recording of the 2023 IJ4EU Impact Award Ceremony below.

Published
Categorized as Allgemein

10 nominations shortlisted for #IJ4EU Impact Award

Ten cross-border investigations have been shortlisted for the inaugural #IJ4EU Impact Award, celebrating excellence in collaborative journalism in Europe.

An independent jury chaired by Shaun Walker, central and eastern Europe correspondent for The Guardian, will choose three winners, which will be announced on 14 April 2021. Each will receive €5,000.

The winners will take centre stage at an award ceremony during #UNCOVERED, a virtual conference organised by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), a partner in the IJ4EU fund.

Below are the 10 shortlisted entries, in no particular order and selected from a pool of nominations by independent evaluators assembled by ECPMF.


The shortlisted nominees!

The Daphne Project

After Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated in 2017, the Forbidden Stories network picked up her work, coordinating a large group of news outlets and journalists to continue investigating high-level corruption in Malta.

Their IJ4EU-supported investigation led to the arrest of Maltese businessman Yorgen Fenech and the resignation of the country’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat.


The Ibiza Affair 

Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Falter investigated a video showing then Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache offering business contacts to a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch in exchange for political support in the run-up to an election. 

He was forced to resign.


The Troika Laundromat 

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) coordinated this investigation into an $8.8 billion network of offshore companies that allowed Russian politicians and criminals to acquire shares in state-owned companies, buy real estate in Russia and abroad, purchase luxury yachts, hire music superstars for private parties, pay medical bills and more. 

The investigation exposed not only the laundromat’s beneficiaries but also its mastermind and operator: Troika Dialog, once Russia’s largest private investment bank.


The FinCEN Files

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) coordinated this investigation into more than 2,500 documents leaked to BuzzFeed News. The files were sent by household-name banks to US authorities, reporting suspicious activity by their clients. 


Lost In Europe

This IJ4EU-supported investigation sought to discover what had become of thousands of migrant children who had gone missing in Europe, some falling into the hands of drug gangs and traffickers.

Many children were found working on cannabis farms and in nail studios in Britain. Many were not found at all.



The Dodgy Paperwork Undermining Europe’s COVID Fight

Another story coordinated by OCCRP, after its Italian partner noticed an alarming trend in Europe: personal protective equipment sold to Europe from China with falsified certificates saying the gear was up to EU standards when it was not.


Global Anti-Abortion Misinformation 

openDemocracy coordinated this investigation – perhaps the largest ever into sexual health and reproductive rights –  into how two US Christian conservative groups use misinformation and manipulation to stop women in the EU and beyond from having legal abortions. Some of the reporters in the all-female team were sent undercover.


Fraud Factory 

The third investigation by OCCRP to reach the shortlist. This project exposed the work of a Kyiv-based scamming group that targeted elderly people in Europe to defraud them of their savings.  


Invisible Workers

This investigation by Lighthouse Reports, Der Spiegel, Mediapart and Euronews probed poor working conditions on European farms, exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. It exposed a lack of protective equipment for seasonal workers, along with unpaid hours, gruelling conditions and pressure to harvest impossible quotas of fruit. 


Luanda Leaks 

A second investigation coordinated by the ICIJ, this time centring on Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s wealthiest woman, and the Western accountants, lawyers and financial advisers who helped her move hundreds of millions of dollars from Angola into offshore accounts.

Acquisitions included an energy giant, a luxury jeweller and a Portuguese lender that helped fund the couple’s ambitions even as other banks shied away.


Featured post

Published
Categorized as Allgemein