Journalists from Kazakhstan and are among the winners of the U.S. State Department’s 2021 Anti-Corruption Champions Award. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced the annual award laureates on December 8, calling those selected – including Kazakh journalist Zhamilya Maricheva, who works for the Protenge investigative journalism project, and Bulgarian journalist Nikolay Staykov, who is a co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Fund investigative group – “individuals who have demonstrated leadership, courage, and impact in preventing, exposing, and combating corruption.