#PanamaPapers Investigation, with Participation of RISE Moldova Journalists, Won the Pulitzer Prize

The #PanamaPapers investigation, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), where journalists from RISE Moldova participated, too, won the Pulitzer Prize for 2017 in the “Explanatory Reporting” category. The awards ceremony was held on Monday, April 10, at Columbia University in New York. Moldovan journalists say that it is the best appreciation of the work of more than 300 reporters from around the world who contributed to Panama Papers.

According to Iurie Sanduta, Director of RISE Moldova, “over 300 reporters analyzed over 11 million documents and brought out to the surface politicians, princes, football players and controversial businessmen, all hidden behind some secret documents; they analyzed a large volume of documents coming from Mossack Fonseca, the factory of offshore companies and cover firms; they managed to find out financial schemes of offshore companies, behind which the true beneficiaries hide.”

In Moldova, the investigations carried out by RISE Moldova have exposed “the offshore relations between Plahotniuc and Voronin; links of ex-Prime Minister of Moldova Ion Sturza with former Romanian billionaire Dinu Patriciu in the British Virgin Islands; over 50 offshore companies the Stati family had juggled in the international oil industry; real beneficiaries of the largest distributor of cable TV and of an important Internet service provider in Moldova; the offshore winery through which two Russian businessmen used a BVI company to borrow over 5 million euros to a wine factory in Chisinau, which is their property, too.”

“It is a project in which we drew attention to data security, to the exchange of encrypted messages, to analysis and verification of data, to coordination and deadlines,” said Iurie Sanduta, mentioning that the information from the #PanamaPapers database is still useful for work on other topics.

The list of Pulitzer Prize winners this year includes publications, such as the New York Daily News and ProPublica in the Public Service category; The New York Times, which received three awards in the Breaking News Photography, Feature Writing and International Reporting categories. The best journalist of the year was named David Fahrenthold from Washington Post.

The Pulitzer Prize was established in 1904 by the Hungarian-born American journalist Joseph Pulitzer and is awarded for outstanding achievements in journalism, reporting, photography, etc. In the United States of America this award is similar to the Nobel Prize awarded to researchers, writers and scientists from around the world or to Oscars in the film industry.