Two graduates of the SAJ are among the winners of the contest for the best journalistic investigation
Anastasia Cucuruz and Ghenadie Brega, graduates of the 2014-2015 class, won the 3rd prize in the contest of journalistic investigations on the topic of corruption. The prize was awarded for the article titled “The Gas (In)dependence of Moldova and Ukraine”, produced in collaboration with journalist Elena Chernyshova from Ukraine.
Anastasia Cucuruz is currently the PR&Communications Manager of the International Center “La Strada”. Since she studied at the School of Advanced Journalism, Anastasia has collaborated with the Journalistic Investigations Center and wrote news articles for Politik.md. She also used to be a local reporter for Transilvania Regional Business, www.trb.ro, a portal of economic analyses from Romania. Ghenadie Brega is reporter with “Ziarul de Garda” weekly newspaper and freelancer with the Journalistic Investigations Center.
“I would have liked that the problem we wrote about didn’t exist… But since abuses happened and were written about, it would have been correct there to be a reaction – which unfortunately didn’t happen. Anyway, we, journalists, won’t give up. We will continue knocking at the door until it opens,” Anastasia said at the award ceremony on Tuesday, December 13.
The contest of journalistic investigations was organized as part of the “Strengthening the Prevention and Analysis Functions of the National Anticorruption Center” project, with the support of UNDP, NAC and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway. 15 journalists registered for the contest, with 42 materials published in the period of January-October 2016. Investigations targeted corruption, mismanagement of public money and property, undeclared wealth and businesses, etc. In addition to diplomas, contest winners received valuable prizes from organizers, such as laptops, video and photo cameras.