2021 #IJ4EU Impact Award winners announced

The Investigative Journalism for Europe (IJ4EU) fund announced on Wednesday four winners of its inaugural #IJ4EU Impact Award celebrating excellence in cross-border investigative reporting.

In no particular order, the winning investigations were:

Selected by an independent jury, the team behind each investigation receives €5,555.

Shaun Walker is The Guardian newspaper’s central and eastern Europe correspondent and chair of the inaugural #IJ4EU Impact Award jury.

“We were all in agreement that The Daphne Project was a deserving winner, coordinating many journalists to continue Daphne Caruana Galizia’s work and having a clear and important impact,” Shaun Walker, central and eastern Europe correspondent for The Guardian newspaper and jury chair, said.

“Lost in Europe shone an important light on the terrible story of missing migrant children. The Troika Laundromat was impressive for the sheer size of the team involved, matched by the size of the vast sums of money it was investigating. The Fraud Factory was a tenacious piece of work that put human faces to a sad story of cross-border fraud.”

Walker announced the winners during a ceremony on April 14 at #UNCOVERED, the annual conference of the IJ4EU fund.

The #IJ4EU Impact Award recognises the best investigative journalism carried out by teams collaborating across frontiers in EU member states and candidate countries.

Managed by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) in cooperation with IJ4EU partners the International Press Institute (IPI) and the European Journalism Centre (EJC), the prize was open to investigations published in 2019 and 2020.

Jury members praised the overall quality of nominations but singled out the four winners as exceptional examples of watchdog journalism on transnational subjects.

The Daphne Project was one of the #IJ4EU Impact Award winners.

Dozens of journalists

The Daphne Project picked up the unfinished work of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed in October 2017 by a car bomb just metres from her home.

Led by Forbidden Stories, a group of 45 journalists representing 18 news organisations from 15 countries, the investigation changed the course of political life in Malta while raising awareness of the dangers facing journalists.

The Troika Laundromat was another winner of the #IJ4EU Impact Award.

The Troika Laundromat is an investigation into an $8.8 billion network of offshore companies used by Russian politicians and criminals to acquire shares in state-owned companies, buy real estate, purchase luxury yachts and more.

Led by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), it involves 1.3 million leaked banking transactions from 230,000 companies, with stories published in 19 media outlets in Europe and elsewhere.

Lost in Europe also picked up €5,555 in prize money.

Lost in Europe sought to discover what had become of thousands of migrant and refugee children who had gone missing in Europe, some falling into the hands of drug gangs and sex traffickers.

The team of investigative journalists from Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands succeeded in bringing widespread attention to a pressing issue that transcends borders.

Fraud Factory won an #IJ4EU Impact Award too.

Fraud Factory is another OCCRP-led investigation, this time exposing the work of a Kyiv-based scamming group that targeted elderly people in Europe to defraud them of their savings.

The project includes a 15-minute video containing secret footage shot by a whistleblower at great personal risk. The jury hailed the investigation as an impressive piece of old-fashioned, cross-border journalism.

‘Fantastic shortlist’

The jury chose the IJ4EU Impact Award winners from a shortlist of 10 nominations drawn up by independent evaluators assembled by ECPMF.

“It was a fantastic shortlist to choose from and it took some time to come to agreement because all of the entries were strong in different ways — some were wide-ranging cross-border cooperations involving dozens of journalists, while others were much more narrow in focus but nonetheless brilliant pieces of journalistic work,” Walker said.

“None of these stories could have been reported in only one country and all four winners showed, in different ways, the benefits of working across borders in our interconnected world.”

In addition to Walker, the jury members were Christian Jensen, executive editor-in-chief of Danish newspaper Politiken; Nassira el Moaddem, an award-winning French journalist, author and TV show host; Teresa Ribeiro, representative on freedom of the media for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe; and Andrzej Rojek, a Polish-born US philanthropist and freedom-of-speech advocate.

The complete #IJ4EU Impact Award jury also consisted of Christian Jensen, Nassira el Moaddem, Teresa Ribeiro, and Andrzej Rojek.

Now in its second year, IJ4EU provides grants and other forms of support to teams of journalists or news outlets in Europe investigating topics of public interest across borders.

It is led by IPI, in partnership with EJC and ECPMF, and funded by the European Commission with co-funding from Open Society Foundations, Fritt Ord, Luminate and the City of Leipzig.

In 2020, the IJ4EU fund disbursed almost €1.1 million in grant funding to 49 investigative projects. That followed a successful pilot year in 2018 during which it gave €350,000 in grants to 12 projects.

To be eligible for the IJ4EU Impact Award, teams need not have received support from the fund, but two of the winners — the Daphne Project and Lost in Europe — were grantees during the first edition of the programme.

The #IJ4EU Impact Award is part of #UNCOVERED conference.

Documentaries associated with three of the winning projects were among videos screened on the first day of #UNCOVERED.

The conference brought together journalists, funders, policymakers and civil society members to explore the highs and lows of cross-border investigative journalism.

Free registration is open for day two of the conference on April 15. See the agenda here.


#IJ4EU Impact Award jury announced

The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) is proud to announce the remaining members of the #IJ4EU Impact Award jury. 

The jury met on Monday March 22 to choose three winners from a shortlist of investigations nominated for Europe’s first award devoted to cross-border investigative journalism. Winners will be announced on April 14. 

The jury met on Monday March 22 to choose three 5,555 winners from a shortlist of investigations nominated for Europe’s first award devoted to cross-border journalism. Winners will be announced at the #IJ4EU Impact Award ceremony on Wednesday April 14, starting at 6pm CEST, as part of #UNCOVERED virtual conference.


Shaun Walker, The Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent

Shaun Walker is The Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent, and chair of the #IJ4EU Impact Award. Previously, he spent more than a decade in Moscow and is the author of The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past.


Teresa Ribeiro, OSCE’s Representative on the Freedom of the Media

Teresa Ribeiro is Representative on Freedom of the Media for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). She was previously Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Portugal and President of the National Commission for Human Rights.


Christian Jensen, editor of Politiken

Christian Jensen is Executive Editor-in-Chief of Danish newspaper Politiken, a role he has had since 2016. Before that, he had an extensive career across Danish journalism.


Nassira el Moaddem, French Journalism Prize 2020 Nominee

Nassira el Moaddem is a French journalist whose book Les Filles de Romorantin was nominated for two of France’s most prominent journalism book prizes in 2020. Nassira is also the host of TV show Arrêt sur Images and has worked across French journalism.


Andrzej Rojek, philanthropist focusing on Freedom of Speech

Andrzej Rojek is a Polish-born US philanthropist with a focus on freedom of speech. He serves as Chair of the Board for the Jan Karski Educational Foundation and helps numerous charitable initiatives in education, scientific exchanges and freedom of speech.


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.


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