Atanas Tchobanov is the founder and director of the Bulgarian investigative outlet BIRD.bg (BIRD stands for Bureau for Investigative Reporting and Data). Tchobanov is the former editor-in-chief of Bivol.bg.

 

He has been exposing the state-mafia nexus in Bulgaria since 2010 and has been working with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) since 2012. He served as an OCCRP board member from 2016 to 2018. Tchobanov has been an ICIJ member since 2020. He has worked on the Azerbaijani Laundromat, the Troika Laundromat, OpenLux, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers and other big international projects.

 

Atanas holds a PhD in computational linguistics from Paris Ouest University, specialised in deep learning models and AI. He is also interested in big data harvesting and exploring, forensic methods, and encryption techniques for protecting communications and journalistic sources.

 

Tchobanov is a co-recipient of the European Press Prize 2024, Sigma Award 2020, and the Global Shining Light Award Certificate of Excellence in 2017 and 2018.