The U.S. Department of State awarded Nikolay Staykov for his anti-corruption work

The co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Fund, Nikolay Staykov, and 11 other individuals from around the world received awards for leadership, courage, and for prevention, detection and counteraction of corruption.

The U.S. Department of State made the announcement today, one day before the International Anti-Corruption Day, celebrated on 9 December.

“Often when speaking of massive, complex challenges like corruption, we lose sight of the fact that our ability to make meaningful progress and change people’s lives for the better comes down to the work of individuals – people who through sheer tenacity, creativity, and bravery, show us that even the most daunting problems are surmountable,” said the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, in his press statement for the occasion. The Bulgarian journalist was awarded alongside Dorothy Bradley of Belize, Alexandra Attalides of Cyprus, Carlos Giovanni Ruano Pineda of Guatemala, Gabriela Alejandra Castellanos of Honduras, Jamiliya Maricheva of Kazakhstan, Juris Juriss of Latvia, Riad Kobeissi of Lebanon, Martha Chizuma of Malawi, Denise Namburete of Mozambique, Dr. Torplus Yomnak of Thailand and Carlos Paparoni of Venezuela.

Nikolay Staykov is an economist, business journalist and editor with many years of experience. In the period 1997 – 2007, he worked successively as a reported, editor and deputy editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian newspaper Capital. He is one of the founders of the non-governmental organization Anti-Corruption Fund, and author and co-author of many investigations, the most prominent of which are related to the offshore connections of the MP Delyan Peevski (2013 – 2014), the bankruptcy of Bulgaria’s Corporate Commercial Bank (2014 – 2019), ApartmentGate (2019), “The Eight Dwarfs” (2020), and “List of Quick Control” (2021).