Trafigura investigators honoured with Daniel Pearl Award

An international group of journalists have been recognised for their work investigating offshore oil trader Trafigura with a Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting.

The collaborative of Kjersti Knudsson and Synnove Bakke from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation; the Guardian's David Leigh; BBC Newsnight's Meirion Jones and Liz MacKean; and Jeroen Trommelen from de Volkskrant was one of two winners to take home the $5,000 prize for their work investigating allegations of waste dumping by Trafigura in Côte d’Ivoire.

The company and its lawyers Carter-Ruck were at the centre of last year’s super-injunction debate. In October the law firm abandoned an attempt to prevent the Guardian from reporting a parliamentary question referencing the injuncted Minton Report, a scientific study commissioned by Trafigura, which described the chemical components of waste dumped in the Ivory Coast in 2006 and their potentially toxic effects.

In December the oil trader also ended a legal dispute with BBC Newsnight over a feature published in May 2009. The programme agreed to: apologise for allegations made about waste dumping in Côte d’Ivoire on air and pay £25,000 to a charity of Trafigura’s choice, as well as legal costs.

The awards were established to honour cross-border investigative reporting and were this year handed out at the sixth Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Formerly the ICIJ Award, the Pearl prize was renamed in 2008 after Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was killed by Pakistani militants in 2002

Aram Roston also took home an award for The Nation's report on Pentagon military contractors in Afghanistan paying protection money to the Taliban to move supplies to US troops. Four other finalists were named by the international panel of judges - a full list of winners and finalists is available at this link.

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