Ivan Angelovski

Ivan Angelovski is an investigative reporter and editor working on long term international projects with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.

He was a member of a team of reporters that won the 2017 Global Investigative Journalism Conference’s citation of excellence, 2017 Investigative Reporting Award with the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia and the second prize of the EU investigative journalism award in the Western Balkans and Turkey in 2016.

Previously he was an investigative reporter for the Insider documentary program at TVB92 in Belgrade, Serbia.

Ivana Jeremic

Based in Belgrade, Ivana is an editor at Balkan Insight who coordinates and works on investigative stories.

Before joining BIRN, Ivana was an investigative reporter and fact-checker at the Serbian Center for Investigative Journalism  from 2012 to 2017 and was Deputy Editor-in-Chief at the same organisation from 2017 to 2018. For the last seven years, she has also been a fact-checker at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

Additionally, she has been an External Assessor at the Intern Journalism formational Fact-checking Network since 2017. Ivana is the 2017 European Press Prize Investigative Reporting Award laureate. She also received the 2017 Balkan Fact-checking Award, which, under the auspices of the International Fact-Checking Network, was established with the aim of encouraging citizens and journalists in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia to base articles on thoroughly fact-checked information. Ivana has been a fellow of BIRN’s 2018 Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence.

Dragana Peco

Dragana Peco works as an investigative journalist at KRIK and Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and a staff researcher for the Investigative Dashboard (ID) online platform.

For six years she worked for the Centre for Investigative Reporting of Serbia (CINS). She won international 2018 Award for Outstanding Merits in Investigative Journalism, given by the Central European Initiative (CEI) and the South East Europe Media Organization (SEEMO).

As part of the KRIK investigative team, in 2017 Dragana won Data Journalism Award and the journalistic award for ethics and courage „Dusan Bogavac“. She received the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence 2014 and three National awards for investigative journalism, in 2011, 2014 and 2016. Dragana trains other reporters in advanced journalism techniques, how to research business registries worldwide and follow the money.

Andrew Baker

Andrew Baker is a freelance filmmaker and photographer. His work is focused on documentary, both long-form and short.

His current projects include the feature documentary “Bellwether,” an expansive two-year production following the 2016 presidential election through the eyes of Terre Haute, Indiana — the one county in America that always votes for the winning president — and Beekeeping on Pluto, a 40-minute film exploring creation through the world of a Vermont blacksmith.

As a cinematographer and/or cameraman, he worked on “Severed” (Reuters documentary series, 2018), “Betrayal: The Plot that Won the White House” (MSNCB), Ultimaker product films, SNA Displays (Outsider), an untitled Tim O’Brien documentary (Look Alive films, dir. Aaron Matthews) and Ultimaker product films (Ultimaker). He lives in New York.

Olaf Sundermeyer

Author and journalist Olaf Sundermeyer studied law at the Ruhr-University Bochum and journalism at the University of Dortmund.

He has worked for national editorial offices in print media, such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), on radio and on television. His regular editorial team has been with Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) since 2012.

His journalistic specialty is internal security issues such as extremism, crime, and violence in football. He is interested in the causes of conflict as well as the motives of violent activists, speaking with extremists in prison to uncover their motives. Sundermeyer is the author of several books; the most recent, “Gauland – The revenge of the old man” follows the transition of Alexander Gauland, AfD party chairman, from conservativist to extremist.

The biography is based on many of Sundermeyer’s conservations with Gauland and other relevant personalities. For his work, he was awarded the “Long Breath” research award in 2016 and 2018 and the German-Polish journalism award in 2014. Sundermeyer lives in Berlin.

Benjamin Strick

Benjamin Strick is an open-source investigator for the BBC and Bellingcat and an instructor and investigator with the EUArms.

He has a background in law and the military, focusing on human rights abuses, conflict, security, and arms. He is best known for his work for BBC Africa Eye on “Anatomy of a Killing” — together with a team of investigators and BBC journalists, Strick discovered where and when the execution of two women and two young children by Cameroon soldiers took place. “Anatomy of a Killing” won The Peabody, Webby and RTS awards.

Even though “Anatomy of killing” is Strick’s most well-known work, his investigations for Bellingcat and EUArms are equally important. He discovered the first Jihadi cryptocurrency crowdsourcing site on the Dark web and wrote about tracing a Jihadi cell, kidnappers and a scammer using blockchain. He also wrote numerous case studies regarding the use of different investigative tools in conflict areas. Finally, he loves dogs.

Frederik Obermaier

Frederik Obermaier is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author who works for Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Obermaier’s work focuses largely on tax havens, corruption, extremism and intelligence services worldwide. He has taken part in numerous award-winning investigations by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and the Forbidden Stories project, among others. 

Obermaier was part of an investigative team that revealed the existence of a video showing the head of Austria’s far-right party FPÖ, Heinz-Christian Strache, promising government contracts to a woman claiming to be a Russian millionaire. The reporting led to the resignation of Austria’s vice chancellor. Together with his colleague Bastian Obermayer, he initiated and coordinated the “Panama Papers” revelations after an anonymous source provided them with 2.6 terabytes of internal data from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Obermaier co-authored an international bestseller about the project. Before the Panama Papers, he was part of the international team of journalists who revealed the “Offshore Leaks,” “Luxembourg Leaks” and “Swiss Leaks”. 

Obermaier has received numerous honors for his work, including the CNN Award, the Otto Brenner Preis, the Wächterpreis, the Journalistenpreis Informatik, the Helmut Schmidt Journalistenpreis and, together with his colleagues, a Scripps Howard award, the George Polk Award for Business Reporting, the Barlett & Steele Award and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award (IRE Award). As part of the Panama Papers team, he won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in the category of “Explanatory Reporting”.

Pavla Holcova

Pavla Holcova is the founder of the Czech Center for Investigative Journalism, where she has investigated numerous cases concerning Serbian organised crime figures, Macedonian secret service investments in Prague, money laundering, and offshore companies.

She is a co-recipient of the Global Shining Light Award, which honours investigative journalism in developing and transitioning countries, and an EU Award for Investigative Journalism.

Holcova works closely with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting project on various international projects and investigations.

Before founding the Czech Center, she worked for six years at the People in Need humanitarian and human rights organisation as head of the Cuban section, and for Europe’s largest developer of open source tools for news media, Sourcefabric.

Anuška Delić

Anuška Delić, is an investigative and data journalist with Slovenia’s main daily newspaper Delo.

She has investigated a variety of issues from asbestos on state-owned train infrastructure and abuses of election campaign law, to Slovenia’s own anabolic steroid king Mihael Karner.

At the end of 2011 she uncovered that leaders of the Slovenian branch of worldwide neo-Nazi organization Blood&Honor were actively involved in the ranks of leading right-wing party. As a direct consequence of her articles, Delić was charged with publishing classified information, charges that were dramatically dropped by state prosecutors minutes before judgement. Subsequently, the Slovenian government changed the article of Criminal Code relating to publication of state secrets.

In 2015 she started The MEPs Project. She gathered journalists representing all 28 EU Member States who filed requests for access to documents of the European Parliament that show how Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) spend the professional allowances they receive on top of their paychecks. Journalists were refused access, and thus filed complaints against the European Parliament with the European Court of Justice. Cases are pending. The group launched its first investigation in May 2017, which revealed how some MEPs abused their allowance, and includes a search facility for readers to check the filings of their local MEP.

In 2015 and 2016 Delić – also a partner of OCCRP – worked on ICIJ’s Panama Papers investigation which brought her and more than ten colleagues at Delo the highest journalistic award in Slovenia: the Slovene Association of Journalists’ Watchdog Award for Extraordinary Achievements.

Twitter: @007_delic

Lawrence Marzouk

Lawrence Marzouk is a journalist and editor with Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Kosovo. He has worked as a journalist for a decade, writing and editing for major regional newspapers in Britain, and contributing news, investigations and features to national British newspapers.  

He helped his first paper to national awards with his editing of the coverage of July 2005 London bombings.

Lawrence has been shortlisted twice for regional reporter of the year awards for his work uncovering scandals in the British public sector, including serious conflicts of interests and lavish spending by state institutions, exposed by documents obtained under the Freedom of Information act.

Since 2009, he has worked for Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Kosovo, editing its English-language newspaper Prishtina Insight and launching a new investigative journalism portal, Gazeta Jeta ne Kosove.

His investigations into high-level corruption have led to international and local criminal probes, including against serving ministers.

In 2010 and 2011, he won best anti-corruption investigation of the year at awards organised by the UN Development Programme.

Lawrence is the author of the manual Follow the Paper Trail, a guide to document-based investigative journalism in Kosovo.

He is currently involved in various projects making data more accessible in Kosovo, including scraping public databases, and encouraging the use of Freedom of Information laws through workshops.