The judges said: "Financial journalists have been criticised in the last couple of years for the stories they missed. It is near impossible to expose an apparently respectable businessperson in South Africa without solid information. Painstakingly checking and double-checking the valuable detail of the intricate story, Rose came through with a really good tale, carefully pieced together and well told, exposing major deception in the country's financial circles. Tannenbaum might have fooled some of South Africa's best-known investors, but not Rose."
The articles detailed the way in which Tannenbaum swindled some of South Africa's biggest and most respected businessmen and investors out of millions and kept the country captivated, raising questions on how a seemingly well-connected and influential man could deceive so many of his peers.
Runners-up, with a prize of R100 000, were producer Susan Puren and presenter Devi Sankaree Govender from the investigative programme Carte Blanche for their insert titled Chicken Run. What began as a fluffy animal cruelty story with a dodgy politician thrown in became a major scandal involving large amounts of provincial and international funding money.
"The story appears at first to be about a chicken-breeding operation run with cruelty and disregard for health laws, which then evolved into something bigger when a former MEC was caught being dishonest, leading to the discovery that he has raised international donor money under false pretences at the expense of a local community.
"Carte Blanche took a seemingly little story and made it big. The journalists worked relentlessly hard and the result was multi-layered, well-crafted and well told exposé," said the judges. The judges made special mention of Govender's excellent interviewing and presentation skills, which were so central to the total unravelling of this story.
