An investigative team of Aida Ciro, Aleksandar Dimitrievski and Geri Emiri received the prestigious third place award from their articles that exposed the challenges faced by Balkan farmers in accessing EU funds through the IPARD Program.
Back in 2018, the Agricultural and Rural Development Agency (ARDA) in Albania, was accredited for the IPARD II Programme. The agency was granted to distribute 94.6 million euros grants (European Commission (EC) allocated 71 million euros while the Albanian state allocated 23.6 million euros nationally). Based on suspicions of corruption in grant distribution, referred by the European anti-fraud office (OLAF), the EC took an extreme measure to temporarily suspend the programme.
The investigation uncovered the corruption that occurred by the stated parties and highlighted the challenges faced by Balkan farmers in accessing funds from the programme.
To read more about the award, click here.
To read more about the project, click here.
Photo by Arlind Veshti
