The BIRN Albania database, presented on January 30, contains data from the asset declaration disclosures of 268 first-instance court judges from 2003 until 2016, and was introduced as a resource for journalists looking into stories on the hidden assets of justice officials.
About 20 mid-career journalists from local and national media participated in the workshop, which provided a guide to the data collected in the database, as well as the methods and techniques of investigative journalism used by BIRN Albania to investigate the hidden assets of Albania’s justice officials.
During the workshop, BIRN Albania also presented the findings from its report on the asset declarations of first-instance court judges, which analyses the asset declaration data and highlights suspicious transactions based on internationally-recognised red flags.
The workshop was aimed at strengthening the skills of journalists to look closely at systemic issues of illicit wealth, with a special focus on the red flags raised by the analysis of asset disclosures by first-instance court judges conducted by BIRN Albania.