KYIV, Ukraine -- Two correspondents for Radio Svoboda, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, won awards for their reporting in the fourth annual U.S. Embassy-Ukrayinska Pravda Investigative Journalism Competition. The awards were presented at the Mezhyhirya Festival, an international investigative journalism conference that took place at the country estate of fugitive Ukrainian ex-President Viktor Yanukovych on June 6-7.
Radio Svoboda reporter Anastasiya Ivantsova won first prize in the print category for her March 2015 report for the "Schemes" program "Life at the Reactor," which revealed the facts behind the illegal construction of an apartment complex dangerously close to a nuclear research reactor outside of Kyiv. Radio Svoboda reporter Olena Loginova won second prize in the video category for her report “Laundromat” (in English via the Kyiv Post), also produced for "Schemes," which documented an alleged Russian money laundering scheme first uncovered by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project that used Ukrainian citizens to move more than $20 billion from Russia into the European Union between 2010 and 2014.
The competition was organized by the newspapers Ukrayinska Pravda and Kyiv Post, with support from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv and SCOOP, a network of Danish investigative journalists. Ivantsova and Loginova were selected from among 94 entrants by a 16-member panel of prominent members of the Ukrainian media.
-- Scott Looney