SCOOP Macedonia is nongovernmental and non-profitable organization aimed to promote, support and stimulate investigative journalism. The purpose of the organization is to support the journalists in their everyday work, with financial or professional help, needed for development of investigative journalism in the country, region, but also globally..
The existence of SCOOP Macedonia was enabled by the Danish association of investigative journalism and the network of Centers for investigative journalism which are a part of the OCCRP network (Organized crime and corruption project) based in Sarajevo. But, also at the same time, the appearance of SCOOP-Macedonia was also supported by other relevant organizations throughout the world, that are active in this area, and with whom we have had fruitful cooperation and enormous support in the process of establishing the centre.
The project SCOOP from Denmark, supported by the International media support, based in Copenhagen, in the previous years has helped the investigative journalism in Macedonia unselfishly, and the result was huge number of investigative stories, which were published in local, but also in the national printed and electronic media in the country. Encouraged by that fact, we would like to continue this mission with the new Center for investigative journalism SCOOP Macedonia, and in partnership with all organizations in the field of investigative journalism.
The aim of the Center for investigative journalism SCOOP-Macedonia is to continue to promote and stimulate the development of investigative journalism in Macedonia and wider, as a significant tool, fighting organized crime and corruption, to strengthen the democratic capacities and to improve the professional qualities of the journalism as well as the democratic atmosphere in Macedonia in general.
THE VISION of the organization is zero corruption, democratic and transparent institutions and quality life.
THE MISSION SCOOP-Macedonia is a group of experienced, professional journalists, whose mission is use of investigative journalism tools in order to decrease corruption and improving citizens’ lives for ensuring good governance, transparent institutions and protection of human rights.
The activities of SCOOP Macedonia will be aimed to stimulate the investigative journalism in the country through seminars, conferences, lectures as well as financial support and logistics for the journalists during their investigative work.
We see the challenge in networking of journalists in Macedonia with their colleagues from the region and wider, which we would like to improve because the borders should not be seen as an obstacle, but opportunity for better cooperation and also improving the skills in the journalistic investigations.
The organization cooperates with all regional centers for investigative journalism and abroad and is a part of the network of OCCRP centers.
STATUTE of the Center for investigative journalism SCOOP Macedonia.
SCOOP Macedonia is member of Global Investigative Journalism network (GIJN).
SCOOP Macedonia is founder and member of Southeastern coalition on Whistleblower protection.
President:
Goran Lefkov is elected as third president of Center for Investigative Journalism SCOOP Macedonia in 2023. He is replacing Zoran Ivanov who serve in mandate of 2019 to 2023. First president of SCOOP was Xhelal Neziri in 2 mandates.
Goran Lefkov has been an investigative journalist since 2009. He wrote the first investigative story for SCOOP Macedonia while SCOOP was functioning as a project of International Media Support. Since the foundation of the organization, he has been working as an investigative journalist. He has published more than 100 short documentaries about corruption and at least 200 investigative stories. The most famous are: The story about the wealth of political parties, about the travel expenses of MPs and many others. With his stories, he has so far saved over 1 billion euros of money for the citizens of North Macedonia.
Active member of several international organizations for investigative journalism, Member and founder of the Balkan Network of Science Journalists and many other organizations.
Member of the Council of Honor at ZNM from 2018 to 2022.
In 2021, he received a sentence from the German Constitutional Court where, along with 6 other investigative journalists, he sued the German Government for a wiretapping law by Germany’s secret service, the BND.
Founders/Directors:
Xhelal Neziri is experienced investigative reporter and analyst. Since 2008 he has been representing Danish SCOOP project in Macedonia, coordinating national and trans-national investigative stories. At the moment Neziri is co-founder and director of Centre for Investigative Journalism SCOOP-Macedonia based in Skopje, and member of International Advisory Board at Journalismfund.eu based in Brussels.
Contact: xhelalneziri@gmail.com
Aleksandar Bozhinovski is Macedonian award winning journalist with nearly 20 years of professional experience. He started as a court reporter back in 1994, while studying Journalism College. With time he progressed to investigative reporter which key areas were police, army, organized crime and corruption. While studying Bozhinovski first met with investigative journalism with lectures from Denis Hamilton, in those days, investigative reporter at LA Times who was visiting teacher in Skopje University. He also atended some NGO work about human right with people from National democratis institute from Washington. During he’s work in goverement owned Nova Makedonija daily (1999-2003) he wrote stories for Alternative information network, together with 20 other journalist from former Yugoslav republics, run by famous journalist Kim Mehmeti and funded by Council of Europe. Then, Bozhinovski was starter journalist in new daily Vreme were he achieve several rewards, like journalist of the year (for 2005) of Vreme, then Best investigative story from Danish sponsored Macedonian institute for media. This reward was for he’s best story to this date, known as Khalid el Masri case. Bozhinovski was the first journalist in the world to reveal a case of extraordinary rendition (kidnaping suspects for terrorism by intelligence agencies). Story was taken by NY Times and the spread around the world. German TV, ZDF teamed with Bozhinovski in 2005 for more investigation on Masri case.In this time, Bozhinovski start collaboration with Organized crime and corruption project, a journalist organization funded by USAID in Washington consisted of investigative journalist form 10 other countries that jointly do stories on subject of organized crime and corruption. Bozhinovski work of several stories for OCCRP and in 2010 was finalist for Daniel Pearl award on Global investigative journalist conference held in Geneva. He also did investigation for Global Integrity. Bozhinovski also worked investigations for weekly Forum, daily Den and weekly and portal Republika. In 2011 he, with Zaklina Hadzi Zafirova and Xhelal Neziri, founded Center for investigative journalism SCOOP Macedonia. During 2013 he was project manager of National Endowment for democracy project: Raising awareness about corruption trough investigative reporting.
Bozhinovski is a project manager of “Together we combat corruption” a 370.000 EUR three and a half year long project, funded by European union and serve as Executive director of SCOOP Macedonia. Project ended on April 30th, 2021.
Contact: aleksandar@scoop.mk; aleksandarmak@yahoo.com
