‘The Baku Connection’: FRANCE 24 and RFI Among Winners of European Press Prize Award

This year, the European Press Prize awarded the Forbidden journalists' consortium for the series of investigations into the drifts of the Azerbaijani power. Among these, journalists Daniel Vallot for RFI, Karina Chabour and Roméo Langlois from the Bureau Enquêtes de France 24, Corentin Bainier and Ershad Alijani of Observers and Sebastian Seibt for the web editor of France 24.

‘The Baku Connection’: FRANCE 24 and RFI among winners of European Press Prize award

FRANCE 24 and its sister radio RFI collaborated with investigative journalism network Forbidden Stories on “The Baku Connection”, a series of reports investigating corruption, human rights violations and other abuses in Azerbaijan, which won the Special Award at the 2025 European Press Prize awards on Wednesday.

ZDF's frontal media revealed that millions of euros had flowed from Brussels to torture prisons in Azerbaijan, which was awarded at the European Press Prize.

The special award was given to the project “Baku Connection” — a cross-border investigation coordinated by “Forbidden Stories” in cooperation with OCCRP and 15 other media partners.

In the category "Special Award" wins a research that revealed that European money also came to Azerbaijan's torture prisons