Investigation into DUO fraud hunt nominated for ‘Loep’

The publications about discrimination in the fraud hunt of student grant provider DUO, which led to an apology from the government, are nominated for the Dutch-Flemish prize for investigative journalism: the Loep.

Investico, the Higher Education Press Agency HOP and NOSop3 are in the race for a Loep in the ‘investigative journalism’ category. They jointly broke out the news about discrimination by DUO last year.

Apologies

The basic grant for those living away from home is about two thousand euros a year higher than the basic grant for those living at home. DUO uses home visits to check whether students are indeed living on their own or not. A lot went wrong in this process.

Remarkably often, DUO targeted students with a non-western migration background. Cultural differences and dubious circumstances were not considered, even though DUO lost one out of four court cases. The government has since apologised for ‘indirect discrimination’ and is commissioning an investigation into the system.

Nine others

There are nine other productions on the longlist in this category, for example on PFAS, children in emergency shelters and Rabobank’s financing of deforestation. There are two other categories: ‘signalling’ and ‘monitoring’ investigative journalism. Three nominations for each category will be announced on 27 May. The winners will be awarded on Friday 21 June.

Belia Heilbron and Anouk Kootstra (Investico), Bas Belleman (HOP) and Sumeyye Ersoy, Salwa van der Gaag and Merijn van Nuland (NOSop3) were also nominated for a Tegel in the research category. This award was granted to documentary filmmaker In-Soo Radstake for ‘Indië Verloren… Selling a colonial war’ last Monday.