Aiko Kempen

Aiko Kempen was selected for the 2025 Shortlist with Bismarck’s Hut in the Forest.

Aiko Kempen is an investigative journalist at FragDenStaat, Germany‘s biggest transparency and freedom of information platform.

He was part of the team that published the classified „NSU-Files“ who were intended to stay under lock and key for 120 years, he showed the tight ropes between government officials and billion-dollar company Tesla and published the restrictive contracts between UEFA and host cities of the 2024 European Football Tournament.

His work – as well as FragDenStaat‘s work in general – always includes publishing not only the story but also the sources and original documents; sometimes thousands of pages.

Credits @ Christiane Gundlach