In Kyrgyzstan, Radio Liberty was awarded for material on Matraimov
The award ceremony for the winners of the annual Prize of Ulanbek Egizbaev, organized by the Investigative Journalism Foundation, took place in Bishkek.
According to the decision of the Supervisory Board, the main prize of the competition was won by the joint investigation of Radio Liberty, Kloop.kg and OCCRP “Clans, corruption and smuggling on the Silk Road”.
The winners were awarded a statuette, a diploma and $1.4 thousand (100 000 KGS). The “Silver” went to the editorial board of Kloop.kg for the investigation “Public land in private hands”. The panel of judges awarded the third place to the chief editor of Factcheck.kg, Bolot Temirov, for the material “Luxury watches, branded bags and clothes of Matraimov’s wife”.
The Chairman of the Fund’s Supervisory Board, Sultan Kanazarov, noted that, compared to last year, this time the number of applications for the competition increased.
“This year we had to expand the composition of the commission. We wanted the work to be evaluated not only by the supervisory board, but also by independent experts and journalists. A multi-stage work was done to select the received materials. The genre of the investigation is very widespread,” Kanazarov said.
It should be noted that the Investigative Journalism Foundation, created to develop this journalism genre in Kyrgyzstan, began work on September 14, 2018. The award takes place annually on February 12, it’s the birthday of the famous investigative journalist Ulanbek Egizbaev.
