Two Toronto Star investigative reporting projects were among those honoured at one of Canada’s most prestigious public service journalism awards Wednesday night.

The Star’s Panama Papers, and Secrecy and the SIU series were each given citations of merit as nominees for this year’s Michener award.

The top prize was awarded to London Free Press for its two-year investigation into the life and death of Jamie High, which exposed shortfalls in policing, bail, community and hospital mental health care.

Robert Cribb, Marco Chown Oved and Tanya Talaga represented the Star in its collaboration with 100 media outlets around the world who worked together to investigate what has now been dubbed the Panama Papers.

Spearheaded by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation looked into the contents of 11.5 million files leaked from inside Mossack Fonseca, a Panama-headquartered law firm that specialized in building offshore companies.

The investigation exposed offshore companies linked to more than 140 politicians, implicating 14 current or former world leaders.

The Star published more than 50 exclusive reports as part of the Panama Papers coverage, including how offshore banking is costing Canadians, links to Canadian politicians, and how the Canada Revenue Agency stacks up against other countries in convicting tax cheats.

In March 2016, a probe by Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) into the shooting death of Andrew Loku determined that the officer did not exceed “justifiable force” and no criminal charges would be laid, the Michener Awards Foundation release said.

Reports from the SIU director are secret, and only sent to the provincial Attorney General. Among the findings of the Star’s SIU and Secrecy team was that a month after receiving the highly secret report into Loku’s death, the attorney general had not yet read it.

Stories by Wendy Gillis, Jacques Gallant, Alex Ballingall, Edward Keenan and Robert Benzie led to increased pressure at Queen’s Park and across the province for more transparency in the SIU investigative process.

Their work contributed to significant actions, including the release of a redacted version of the SIU investigation, public access to Toronto police board reports of SIU investigations of Toronto police and, in April, an independent review tabled its report with 129 recommendations to improve police oversight and transparency in Ontario, a Michener release said.

The Star won the Michener in 2014 for its coverage of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford.

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The other finalists this year were the Globe and Mail, the National Observer, and La Presse.

The Michener awards were founded in 1970 by the late Roland Michener, who served as governor general from 1967 to 1974. The awards ceremony was hosted by Governor General David Johnston at Rideau Hall.