birnEU, Author at BIRN - Page 94 of 219

BIRN Bosnia Reports on Crime, Corruption, Terrorism

BIRN in Bosnia and Herzegovina has started monitoring the work of Bosnia’s judiciary in rule-of-law cases in addition to reporting on war crimes.

BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina has started reporting on rule-of-law cases as the topic becomes a key issue for the country in the year in which it is planning to submit its European Union membership application.

BIRN’s new project focuses on providing the public with as much information as possible on Bosnia’s efforts to bring suspects to justice for the gravest crimes.

“Although organised crime, terrorism and corruption have been recognised as key challenges facing Bosnia and Herzegovina at present, there is no media dedicated exclusively to reporting on those issues, so we think this is a timely project that fulfills actual needs,” said Denis Dzidic, editor of BIRN in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The latest EU report on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s progress towards accession makes clear that corruption remains widespread in the country and that concrete work on processing corruption cases is almost non-existent.

It warns that it investigations into organised crime and terrorism cases must be sped up and improved.

Reports on organised crime, corruption and terrorism, as well as on war crimes and coming to terms with the past, will be soon published on a new media platform, detektor.ba.

BIRN BiH Reporters Cover Karadzic Verdict in The Hague

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Bosnia and Herzegovina sent two of its journalists to cover Radovan Karadzic’s verdict from The Hague in March with the support of the OSCE mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Denis Dzidic and Nedim Jahic spent three days in The Hague reporting live from the courtroom, giving interviews for international and Bosnian media outlets, interviewing Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and recording numerous reactions from relevant commentators before and after the verdict was pronounced.

A day before the verdict, on March 23, BIRN published an exclusive interview with Karadzic, Radovan Karadzic: ‘I Expect to be Acquitted’.

The interview had widespread impact: it was republished 259 times in other media outlets, including Britain’s The Guardian and Slovenia’s siol.net and was on the home pages of every respected news portal in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro.

The interview was read on BIRN BiH website 6, 113 times, a record readership for an article on the site.

For the first time ever, BIRN BiH had a live blog dedicated to the verdict announcement, which was followed by 2,000 unique visitors.

The live blog was also part of the Croatian Jutarnji list live blog.

The BIRN BiH Facebook and Twitter accounts were also fully dedicated to the live coverage, disseminating information from The Hague, but also from local reporters in Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Bratunac, Prijedor and Banja Luka.

In the week of Karadzic’s verdict, BIRN BiH’s Facebook page reached 107,000 people; its Twitter account had 35,772 impressions on published posts; and website www.justice-report.com had more than 30,000 unique visitors – all records for all BIRN BiH platforms.

BIRN BiH published eight exclusive reactions before and after the verdict on online platforms (live blog, Facebook and Twitter): Munira Subasic, from the Mothers of Srebrenica, Murat Tahirovic, from the association Victims of Genocide, Amor Masovic, Institute for Missing Persons, Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor, Peter Robinson, Karadzic’s legal adviser, Goran Petronijevic, Karadzic’s adviser, Momir Savcic, from the Organisation of Combatants of Republika Srpska, and Milorad Kojic, from the Republic Centre for War Crime Investigations.

During the time they spent in The Hague, Denis Dzidic and Nedim Hasic published the following articles, which had 30 republications in other media outlets:

Danas historijska presuda haškog tribunala

Praćenje izricanje presude iz glerije Tribunala

Hartmannova prisilno uvedena u Tribunal

Samo da živ dočeka presudu

Na Tribunalovom travnjaku

The BIRN BIH team also published the following articles while they were in The Hague:

Karadžić osuđen na 40 godina zatvora

Reakcije na presudu Radovanu Karadžiću

BIH ujedinjena u nezadovoljstvu

Dzidic and Hasic also gave live statements for the following media: klix.ba, media.ba, BH Radio, RSG radio, Antena radio, RTV Zenica, BHT, Radio 101 Prijedor, as well as speaking to Sky News and BBC News.

BIRN Wins Seven Prestigous Awards in May

BIRN’s investigative journalists and teams in Macedonia, Serbia, Albania and Kosovo have been given seven different awards in the course of one month for the quality of their reporting.

The most recent BIRN journalist to receive an award in May for his work was Boris Georgievski, author of the series of investigations called ‘Dossier Telecom’, produced for BIRN Macedonia online publication Prizma, who won the first prize in the European Union awards for investigative journalism for 2015.

The BIRN Macedonia team also won the second prize for its investigation and database, ‘Skopje 2014 Uncovered’.

BIRN Serbia journalist Aleksandar Djordjevic win first prize in the EU awards for investigative journalism in Serbia for his report entitled ‘Pumping Out the Pit and the Budget’ which was named the best investigative story in 2015.

The story was produced as part of the ‘A Paper Trail for Better Governance’ programme, which is funded by Austrian Development Agency.

BIRN’s Albania investigation Albania’s Judges Wealth Escapes Scrutiny, by journalist Leonard Bakillari, meanwhile won the first prize in the EU Investigative Journalism Awards 2015 for Albania

BIRN’s film The Unidentified, investigating the commanders responsible for brutal attacks during the Kosovo war, was given the best short documentary award at the South East European Film Festival in Los Angeles.

And finally, BIRN Serbia journalist Aleksandar Dordjevic scooped one more first prize for the best investigative journalism story in Serbia’s print media.

The award was given by the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia, NUNS, and the US Embassy to Belgrade. The investigation, produced by BIRN Serbia and published in the magazine Vreme, revealed how the Belgrade Business School, under pressure from government officials, unlawfully lent seven million euros to heavily indebted companies that were unlikely to repay the money.

BIRN Macedonia Wins EU Investigative Awards

A series of articles by Boris Georgievski won the prize for best investigation of 2015, while second prize went to BIRN’s database, ‘Skopje 2014 uncovered’.

Journalist Boris Georgievski, author of the series of investigations called “Dossier Telecom”, produced for BIRN Macedonia online publication Prizma, won the first prize of the European Union for investigative journalism for 2015.

The BIRN team also won the second prize for its investigation and database, “Skopje 2014 Uncovered”.

The third prize, for young investigative journalist, went to Telma journalist Biljana Nikolovski.

“Dossier Telecom” analysed the voluminous evidence files from the New York Court case conducted against former leading figures in Magyar Telekom, accused of bribing government officials in Macedonia.

The research shed new light on the privatization of Macedonian Telecommunications and on the events that preceded it.

“Skopje 2014 Uncovered” contains extensive research that provides new insight into the public money spent on controversially changing the appearance of the Macedonian capital.

The basis of the research is an interactive online database, “Skopje 2014 Uncovered”, which contains all the sums, contracts, suppliers, names of companies and authors as well as investors from the project, and determines the final total cost of the project.

The Skopje 2014 Uncovered database is available in Macedonian and English, and in addition to the summarized data, enables easy cross-analysis of the data by users seeking in-depth information on public money spent on the project.

“Skopje 2014 Uncovered” this year also received the prestigious “Nikola Mladenov” award for investigative journalism.

EU Prize Highlights Cross-Border Collaboration

An award-winning investigation into a $75m road-building contract underscores the importance of cross-border collaboration.

An investigation into how a multi-million-dollar road construction contract was quietly handed to a consortium with little highway-building experience was made possible thanks to close collaboration between journalists in Kosovo and Serbia.

The story, which secured third prize last week in the European Union’s investigative journalism awards for Serbia [https://birn.eu.com/en/news-and-events/birn-reports-win-eu-investigative-journalism-awards], was produced as part of the Austrian-Development-Cooperation funded “A Paper Trail to Better Governance” project.

BIRN assembled a team of five investigative journalists in Albania, Austria, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia to carry out a series of pioneering, year-long, cross-border investigations into the biggest players in this road building industry, their links to power and how they have spent – and sometimes squandered – massive public budgets.

Investigations, including the award-winning story – Veselinovic-linked Consortium Bags 75m Dollar Contract in Secret Deal http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/veselinovic-linked-consortium-bags-75m-dollar-contract-in-secret-deal, were published on a bespoke webpage – Road to Ruin [http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/page/road-to-ruin-home]. It features an interactive map of highway projects as well as background material on how corruption affects the construction industry.

The prize-winning story was compiled by Petrit Colaku and Kreshnik Gashi in Pristina and Ivan Angelovski, and Jelena Cosic in Belgrade.

Project editor Lawrence Marzouk said: “Working across borders was absolutely critical for this story as it required official documents from institutions in both Serbia and Kosovo, as well as on the ground contacts.

“With the team’s close collaboration, we were able to build the full picture of Zvonko Veselinovic’s shady business deals.

“This investigation is just one excellent example of the many stories published as part of the project which would not have been possible without strong teams, working together across the region”.

“A Paper Trail to Better Governance” project started in October 2013 and has honed the skills of dozens of investigative journalists in the Balkans and Moldova, helping reporters to hold officials to account and improving the implementation and use of freedom of information laws.

BIRN Serbia journalist Aleksandar Djordjevic won first prize in the EU for his report entitled “Pumping Out the Pit and the Budget”.

BIRN Reports Win EU Investigative Journalism Awards

BIRN Serbia journalist Aleksandar Djordjevic win first prize in the EU awards for investigative journalism in Serbia, while the third prize went to BIRN’s Ivan Angelovski, Jelena Cosic, Petrit Collaku and Kreshnik Gashi.

Aleksandar Djordjevic’s report entitled ‘Pumping Out the Pit and the Budget’ was named the best investigative story in 2015 in the EU awards for investigative journalism on Tuesday.

Djordjevic’s story revealed that the public company Electric Power Industry of Serbia awarded a public tender for to pump flood water out of the most important mine in Serbia to an inexperienced consortium, increasing the cost of the whole operation.

After the investigation in January 2015, BIRN was publicly criticised by Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic and media that support his administration.

Third prize went to Ivan Angelovski, Jelena Cosic, Petrit Colaku and Kreshnik Gashi for a story revealing how a multi-million-dollar road construction contract was quietly handed to a consortium with little highway-building experience and linked to controversial Serbian businessman Zvonko Veselinovic. The story was produced as part of “A Paper Trail for Better Governance” programme, which is funded by Austrian Development Cooperatiion.

The president of the jury, a member of the Anti-Corruption Council, Miroslava Milenovic, stressed the importance of investigative journalism to the general public.

“If there were no investigative journalism, many important events in society, many cases of corruption and social neglect of public goods, the arrogance of the political and economic elite would stay hidden from the public,” said Milenovic.

The award for the best young investigative reporter went to journalists Snezna Djuric and Novak Grujic from the news site Whistle for their ‘Municipal Radar’ series, while RTV Vojvodina journalist Darko Sper scooped the second prize for his story about the trial of a banned neo-Nazi organisation called the National Formation.

BIRN Kosovo Publishes Court Monitoring Report

BIRN Kosovo court monitoring report paid particular attention to trials related to corruption but also addressed several other problems that were observed during fieldwork.

The report contains detailed analysis on topics such as sentencing policies, lack of unification of court fees, the situation in the Palace of Justice, the judges’ strike, analysis of various laws and the lack of personnel in the judiciary and prosecution.

The report also sheds light on the respect for legal provisions during trials (or the lack thereof), including the level of preparation of prosecutors for trials (or the lack thereof), delays in cases, lack of equality of parties in the trial, holding trials without the defendants being present, lack of depiction of the factual situation in the records, lawyers disrupting order in the courtroom, lack of respect for legal time limits, lack of seriousness, negligence and incomplete compositions of the trial panel.

Click to download report in English.

Click to download report in Albanian.

Click to download report in Serbian.

BIRN Albania Investigation Wins EU Award

The investigation Albania’s Judges Wealth Escapes Scrutiny, by journalist Leonard Bakillari has won the first prize in the EU Investigative Journalism Award 2015 for Albania.

Bakillari was awarded first prize for his article on corruption in the judiciary system, published in reporter.al and BalkanInsight.com – BIRN online publications.

Second prize went to Ornela Liperi of economic magazine “Monitor” for her article on the financial crisis and debt situation of business companies in Albania. The award for best article by young investigative journalist was given to Habjon Hasani for his TV report on the petroleum concession and its effects on economy,

“Freedom of expression and freedom of the media implies a commitment to democracy, good governance and political accountability. These are some of prerequisites for a country to become part of the EU and one of the reasons why each of you play such an important role in creating EU standards,” said Jan Rudolph, Head of Political, Economic and Information Section announcing the EU Investigative Journalism Awards.

Bakillari’s investigation was published as part of BIRN Albania’s program on Exposing Corruption in Albania, which is financed by the Open Society Foundation in Albania (OSFA), the Balkan Trust for Democracy (BTD) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

BIRN’s Kosovo War Film Wins US Festival Award

BIRN’s film The Unidentified, investigating the commanders responsible for brutal attacks during the Kosovo war, was given the best short documentary award at the South East European Film Festival in LA.

The Unidentified, which names the Serbian officers who ordered attacks on Kosovo villages around the town of Pec/Peja in 1999 and those involved in the cover-up operation to hide the victims’ bodies, was awarded the best short documentary prize at the South East European Film Festival in Los Angeles on Thursday.

Nemanja Babic, the director of the film, told the audience at the Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills that work on the film continued for two years as the production team struggled to persuade all those involved, both perpetrators and victims, to give interviews for the documentary.

“It took us months to convince a lot of people to appear in this documentary. Some of the witnesses first said yes and then they would change their mind once we pressed ‘play’ on the camera,” Babic said.

“This prolonged the whole process of filming, but in the end the work paid off and this prize also inspires us to continue working on this topic,” he added.

The Unidentified takes viewers back to 1999, to the villages of Ljubenic, Cuska, Pavljan and Zahac near Pec/Peja in Kosovo, where Serbian fighters killed more than 118 Albanian civilians. Their bodies were either burned or removed, and some of them were later found in mass graves at the Batajnica police training centre near Belgrade in 2001.

The trial of 11 fighters alleged to have been involved in the killings – 10 of them accused of being direct perpetrators – is still ongoing in Belgrade.

In February 2014, nine of them were sentenced to a total of 106 years in jail but an appeals court annulled the verdict last March, calling it “incomprehensible and contradictory” and sent the case for retrial.

The film had its international premiere at last year’s Sarajevo Film Festival and has been screened at various other festivals and institutes, in Paris, New York, Washington DC, Zagreb, Belgrade, Prizren, Pristina, Tirana, Maribor and Los Angeles.

The Unidentified will also be screened for the first time in Belgrade on May 14 at this year’s BELDOCS film festival.

BIRN Wins Investigative Reporting Award

BIRN journalist Aleksandar Dordjevic scooped first prize for the best investigative journalism story in Serbia’s print media.

The award was given by the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia, NUNS, and the US Embassy to Belgrade at a ceremony on Thursday, May 5.

The investigation, produced by BIRN Serbia and published in the magazine Vreme, revealed how the Belgrade Business School, under pressure from government officials, unlawfully lent 7 million euros to heavily indebted companies that were unlikely to repay the money.

The jury said the story raised important questions about corruption and impunity in Serbia.

US Ambassador to Serbia Kyle Randolph Scott told the ceremony: “Journalists in Serbia work in tough conditions. Investigative reporting requires non-stop work, particular attention to the facts, collecting data from different sources and often personal courage.”

The award for the best radio and television investigation went to Vera Aksentijevic, journalist at the public broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia. The prize for online media was secured by Dragana Peco, Stevan Dojcinovic and Atanas Cobaov from investigative portal KRIK – Crime and Corruption Reporting Network – for a series of articles about the Mayor of Belgrade.

This is the fourth time BIRN Serbia has scooped the award for best investigation, and this year BIRN journalists were shortlisted for two other stories.

Jelena Veljkovic, BIRN Serbia journalist, and Vladimir Kostic, from the Serbian Center for Investigative Journalism, were among the finalists for their investigation into how politician Bratislav Gasic awarded contracts to companies linked to his family while he was a mayor of Krusevac.

Ivan Angelovski, Petrit Colaku, Kreshnik Gashi and Jelena Cosic were shortlisted in the online media category for a story revealing how a multi-million-dollar road construction contract was quietly handed to a consortium with little highway-building experience and linked to notorious businessman Zvonko Veselinovic.