Journalists at the BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting learned on Wednesday how to track money laundering, even when they have only one item of information.
Stevan Dojcinovic, a Belgrade investigative journalist, explained how he and his colleagues managed to connect Serbian tycoon Miroslav Miskovic with a major money laundering scam.
“We had only one piece of information, the name of the Belize-based offshore company that was laundering money inSerbia,” Dojcinovic recalled.
He explained how his team managed to connect Miskovic with the money inBelizeby looking at business register data, the real estate register and through field work.
Dojcinovic specialises in investigating links between organized crime and Balkan businessmen, privatisation deals, money laundering, private security agencies and the gambling industry.
Dojcinovic won the 2011 Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting and the National Award for Investigative Reporting in 2011 and 2012.
The one-week programme at the BIRN Summer School started on August 19 with about 28 journalists participating.
The lead trainer this year is Sheila Coronel, Director and Professor of Professional Practice at theToni Stabile Centerfor Investigative Journalism at ColumbiaUniversity.
The principal focus of the third annual BIRN Summer School is reporting on organised crime and corruption for print and broadcast media.
BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting 2012 was organized in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and was supported by Open Society Foundations, OSCE Mission to Skopje, OSCE Mission in Kosovo and USA Embassy in Skopje.