Sofia Cherici

Sofia Cherici was selected for the 2026 Shortlist with Scrap Wars: How child labour and conflict feed Turkey steel boom.

Sofia Cherici is an investigative journalist based in Istanbul, with a track record of leading ambitious cross-border investigations across Europe and the Middle East. Her work focuses on the intersection of business malpractice, tainted supply chains, the environment, conflict and state accountability. Her reporting has been supported by international grants from Journalismfund Europe, CIJI and IJ4EU.

She specialises in long-form and multimedia reporting, combining fieldwork with public records, financial registries, FOI requests, data analysis, and OSINT. Her recent projects include coordinating Scrap Wars, a cross-border investigation tracing conflict-linked steel scrap from Syria into Turkey’s steel industry — ultimately contributing to Lebanon’s ban on scrap metal imports from Syria — and reporting on Biomass: The Green Mirage, an investigation into a Czech billionaire’s scheme to exploit loopholes in Europe’s green-subsidy regime. Her work has appeared in outlets including The New Arab, La Repubblica, Follow the Money, EL PAÍS, New Lines Magazine and IrpiMedia.