Miami Herald/el Nuevo Herald among winners of prestigious Premio Gabo for gold-smuggling investigation
A collaborative investigation on gold smuggling in the Americas, developed by five journalism organizations including the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald, was awarded Thursday the prestigious Premio Gabo, the most important distinction for journalistic work in Spanish and Portuguese.
The project,
won in the Text category and was regarded upon submission by the contest judges as “a piece made with a lot of courage and that dazzles for its originality.”
The organizations involved were InfoAmazonia (Brasil), Correo del Caroní (Venezuela), De Correspondent (Holland), Runrun.es (Venezuela), the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald.
It was published on July 23, 2019, as a six-part series in the Herald titled “Smugglers’ Paradise: How ‘Blood Gold’ Keeps Maduro in Power.” It explored the trafficking of illegal gold starting from Venezuela and exposed how Venezuelan refugees are frequently used as smugglers across international borders.
The project, which used data analysis, documents and extensive field reporting, also explored how political leaders in Venezuela profited from the operation, which uses Colombia and islands in the Caribbean as midpoints before the gold is distributed to far-reaching customers in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
Nine journalists and 16 translators, editors, developers and others, made up the team that built the months-long project. At the
Herald, reporters Antonio Maria Delgado, Kyra Gurney, Jim Wyss, Nick Nehamas and Jay Weaver worked along with editors Casey Frank and Nancy San Martin.
The Premio Gabo is named for and inspired by explain why Wood reached out to him following his removal from Twitter.
Silva, though, defended the statements he made in his Nov. 17 affidavit submitted on behalf of a motion by Wood to temporarily stop the state of Georgia from certifying its presidential election results, saying “I would never file anything frivolous.” And he told the Miami Herald that the media is lying about there being no evidence of election fraud.
“For the media to say there’s no evidence is a pure lie. There are many affidavits. There are reports, experts, many things, videos put together, and no judge has looked at a single piece of evidence,” said Silva, who began an interview by asking a reporter how he voted and whether he was a Democrat. “There’s a lot of evidence.”
Silva said he traveled to Georgia in mid-November because he wanted to see if talk of election fraud was accurate. Biden had won the state by about 14,000 votes, and Raffensperger, the secretary of state, had ordered a hand recount of the entire presidential election in order to help address allegations of fraud and chicanery. The recount confirmed Biden’s victory by a smaller margin of about 12,000 votes.
Silva’s suspicions about the election were shared by a number of Republicans and Trump voters around the country and in MiamiDade County, where Trump successfully boosted his support in significant numbers.
“I wanted to see if it was true,” Silva said, “if an election can be stolen in this country.”
A Georgia Republican Party list of election observers in Henry County, south of Atlanta, included Silva, a paralegal at his firm and an attorney who listed the same address as Silva & Silva, among other South Florida legal professionals. Silva’s affidavit didn’t mention any visits to Henry County. But he swore under oath in the affidavit that he saw election workers in nearby DeKalb and Cobb counties count “thousands of [mail] ballots that just had the perfect bubbled marked for Biden and no other markings in the rest of the ballot.”
Silva also swore that he saw Trump ballots placed into stacks of Biden votes and hostility toward Rethe work of Gabriel García Marquez, Nobel Prize winner and one of the most iconic Latin American literary giants. publican observers.
“Based on my observations, I have reached the conclusion that in the counties I have observed, there is widespread fraud favoring candidate Biden only,” Silva wrote.
Janine Eveler, Cobb County’s director of elections, dismissed Silva’s allegations.
“All of his ‘observations’ are skewed, conflated, or manipulated to match what he wanted to believe was going on,” Eveler wrote after the Miami Herald emailed her a link to Silva’s affidavit. “If I’m being generous, I could also say he just did not understand the process.”
A spokesman for Raffensperger wouldn’t specifically address the allegations in Silva’s affidavit but pointed to a letter the secretary of state sent to members of Congress seeking to debunk false allegations ahead of the Jan. 6 vote to certify the election. In the letter, Raffensperger noted that there were “numerous reasons” for the existence of “pristine” mail ballots lacking creases or evidence of wear and tear.
“The unstated implication of this allegation is that county elections officials are creating fake or invalid ballots and running them through scanners,” wrote Raffensperger. “There is absolutely no evidence this happened a single time in Georgia.”
In Georgia’s northern district, federal District Judge Steven Grimberg ultimately denied Wood’s motion for a temporary restraining order, an effort to stop the certification of the Nov. 3 vote.
But Silva says he witnessed ballot tampering first-hand and doesn’t understand why there isn’t more of an effort to investigate. He also believes Twitter has over-stepped its bounds and is controlling free speech.
“This is horrific. This is terrifying,” said Silva, who noted that his parents came to the U.S. from
Cuba and said he’s worried about the Democratic Party’s leftward bent. “And I’ll try for the future of my children to keep fighting for freedom, the first amendment, and that’s all I can tell you, buddy.”