Around 10 million people live in Brazil's south-eastern state of Parana.

After having scrutinized extensive mismanagement of public funds, a team of Brazilian journalists won this year's Global Shining Light Award at Kiev's Global Investigative Journalists Conference

With their special report, "The Secret Diaries", journalists Katia Brembatti, Karlos Kohlbach, James Alberti and Gabriel Tabatcheik triggered the biggest transformation in the history of the Legislative Assembly of the Brazilian state Parana.

Based on 750 secret memos, also known as "diaries", the four journalists spent more than two years compiling a vast collection of data to uncover a multi-million dollar scheme to divert public funds to private bank accounts of members of the assembly.

Public outcries and arrests

When published, "The Secret Diaries" prompted a public outcry resulting in large protests taking more than 30,000 people to the streets alongside firings and arrests of several public officials.

The secret memos were entered into an extensive online database and consulted more than 300,000 times by curious Brazilians, who also forwarded more than a thousand anonymous tips to the reporters.

Honoring journalists working under threat

The Global Shining Light Award is presented to journalists reporting under threats, duress or other difficult conditions.

While conducting the investigations two bombings took place in the lobby of the journalists' newsrooms and the reporters involved in the investigation received several threats.

Presenting the award to the four courageous journalists, member of the jury Anton Harber said:

"The [journalists] worked under considerable pressure and the outcome had a major impact, leading to mass protests, prosecutions and important changes in the system in their province of Parana. Their worked enforced transparency on a reluctant provincial government and this will have long-term impact on governance in the province".

"The Secret Diaries" was published in the Brazilian newspaper Gazeta do Povo and broadcast on the popular RPC TV in Parana. A summary of the memos alongside other of evidence is available here.