The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has won the TRACE Prize for Investigative Reporting for Caspian Cabals, a sweeping investigation exposing how Western oil companies ignored corruption risks and cost blow-outs to secure their stakes in the critical Caspian pipeline, enriching Kazakh and Russian elites along the way.
The investigation, published in November 2024, brought together more than 60 journalists in 30 countries. The cross-border reporting team sifted through tens of thousands of documents, poring over leaked internal company records, confidential emails, audits, contracts, land records, and court and regulatory filings. ICIJ also interviewed five whistleblowers who alleged the oil companies’ dealings in the region may have violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
“Caspian Cabals is a story of greed, corruption and complicity,” said Fergus Shiel, ICIJ’s managing editor. “It reveals how powerful elites in Kazakhstan and Russia exploited a state-backed oil pipeline to enrich themselves while Western oil giants ignored red flags.
“Inflated contracts, insider deals and opaque financial structures helped elites turn public resources into private fortunes — fortunes that paid for luxury yachts, fine art and billion-dollar real estate developments. Meanwhile, Kazakhs in oil-producing regions have been displaced without meaningful compensation or forced to live in polluted environments that they believe are poisoning their children.”
Caspian Cabals is a story of greed, corruption and complicity.
— ICIJ managing editor Fergus Shiel
The annual TRACE Prize recognizes groundbreaking journalism that uncovers corrupt business dealings, bribery and other financial crimes.
This is the third time ICIJ has been awarded the prize by the TRACE Foundation, an anti-bribery nonprofit organization supporting journalistic projects and research that increases corporate transparency and accountability. ICIJ previously won the TRACE Prize for 2023’s Cyprus Confidential, which exposed how Cyprus financial services providers helped Russian oligarchs shield their wealth from looming war sanctions, and the 2020 FinCEN Files, a collaboration between more than 400 journalists that showed how trillions of dollars in suspicious transactions flowed freely through the world’s major banks. That investigation was honored as a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting.
In its prize announcement, the TRACE Foundation praised Caspian Capals for underscoring the universality of corruption, which “knows no borders, race or culture.”
“This deep examination of a multinational oil boondoggle stood out as a clear winner not only for its exceptional quality and meticulous reporting, but also for its global significance,” the announcement said.
Sydney Freedberg, the lead reporter on the investigation, said ICIJ’s model as an independent, donor-supported global news organization allowed reporters to collaborate deeply in tracing dirty money trails and uncovering abuses of power around the world.
“This is the kind of story ICIJ was built for: deep, cross-border and urgent.”
