Steve Stecklow from Reuters won the 2013 Malcolm Forbes Award- Best international business news reporting in newspapers, news services or online with Babak Dehghanpisheh, Yeganeh Torbati and Reuters staff for “Assets of the Ayayollah.” Here, he discusses his award-winning work in the Up Close video series that features OPC Award winners.
The judges were impressed by Reuters’ ability to piece together how Iran’s top religious cleric, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had amassed a financial empire worth $95 billion, rivaling the wealth of the late Shah. In a three-part series, Stecklow and colleagues drew a devastating portrait of how Khamenei had secured a position in nearly every sector of Iran’s economy through a little-known agency called Setad. Reuters took major risks in investigating the ayatollah.