Poonam Agarwal to Deliver the 2024 CIJ Gavin MacFadyen Memorial Lecture

Indian investigative journalist Poonam Agarwal will deliver this year’s Gavin MacFadyen Memorial Lecture: Election Integrity: the Indian Electoral Bonds Scam on Wed 3 July.

The Gavin MacFadyen Memorial lecture was established in 2017 after the death of our founding director, investigative journalist Gavin MacFadyen. The lecture aims to honour his memory by inviting some of the world’s most courageous investigative journalists to talk about their investigations.

In the past these lectures were delivered by a Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández (2017), an Indian investigative journalist Rana Ayyub (2018), a Filipino-American journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa (2019), a Turkish journalist and editor Can Dündar (2020), an investigative journalist from Myanmar, Wa Lone (2021), an Indian journalist and activist Meera Jatav (2022), and a veteran Spanish investigative journalist José María Irujo (2023). The lecture wasn’t recorded due to the sensitive nature of the topic.

Poonam Agarwal

Poonam Agarwal is an award-winning Independent Senior Investigative Journalist with over 20 years of experience in journalism. She is also a legal advocate. She started her career as a TV journalist in 2005 and worked with the BBC, NDTV, Times Now, and The Quint among others.

Published: 03 Jun 2024

3 July 2024

Election Integrity: The Indian Electoral Bonds Scam

The Electoral Bonds scheme was introduced by the Indian government as a tool to make political donations through banking channels. It was subsequently used by individuals within that government, according to Poonam Agarwal's investigation, to take bribes in the form of donations.