OCCRP is in the news after it was accused by the Bharatiya Janata Party of working with George Soros and Rahul Gandhi to ‘destabilise India’.
New Delhi: In end December 2022, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) had received $19.46 million in grants, of which almost $17.4 million came from 10 private and government organizations. These included: Open Society Foundations ($2,357,504), Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund ($1,820,000), Dutch Postcode Lottery ($467,862), Limelight Foundation ($176,840), Fondation Nicolas Puech ($103,087), Sigrid Rausing Trust ($104,958), US Department of State ($4,055,273), USAID ($5,233,749), UK Foreign Office ($1,706,863) and National Endowment for Democracy (NED) ($1,370,990).
OCCRP is in the news after it was accused by the Bharatiya Janata Party of working with George Soros and Rahul Gandhi to “destabilise India”.
The top three donors to OCCRP, as the data shows, were USAID, US Department of State, and Open Society Foundations.
The Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund is a charitable foundation established by Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist. The Dutch Postcode Lottery (Nationale Postcode Loterij) is one of the largest charity lotteries in the Netherlands. The Limelight Foundation is an independent philanthropic foundation, based in the Netherlands, founded in 2021 by John Caspers and Merel Borger. The Fondation Nicolas Puech is a philanthropic foundation created by Nicolas Puech, a French businessman known for his significant role in the luxury goods sector, particularly through his family’s involvement with Hermès. The Sigrid Rausing Trust is a major philanthropic organization based in the UK, established by Sigrid Rausing, a Swedish-British philanthropist and heir to the Tetra Pak fortune.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private, non-profit organization established in 1983, primarily funded by the US Congress but operating independently from the US government.
However, as revealed by The Sunday Guardian in recent reports on Bangladesh (“Documents show US set in motion plan to oust Hasina”, September 15) and Cambodia (“Biden administration backed organizations plotting colour revolution in Cambodia”, November 10), NED played a crucial role in pushing for regime change in these two countries. While it was successful in Dhaka, it could not succeed in Phnom Penh.
OCCRP was originally created in 2007, using $1.7 million in funding from the US State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), though the funding was routed through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) through a contract with the purpose of “improving regional investigative reporting capacity to expose organized crime in Southeast Europe.”
Former USAID Sarajevo Director, Mike Henning motivated INL’s funding of OCCRP, stating, “People will talk maybe more to a journalist than to a government official,” and that “law enforcement is happy to have other external actors do that kind of work.”
It is clear that OCCRP is a brainchild of the US State Department, which has continued to support it through regular grants from the $66 billion budget that it received this year. Apart from direct funding, the involvement of individuals close to the State Department, like George Soros, suggests that OCCRP has also received financial assistance indirectly from organizations allied to the State Department.
In September 2022, OCCRP received a $2.3 million grant from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. In July 2024, it was given a $2.4 million grant by the US mission to Paraguay. In September 2020, it was given a $2.4 million grant by the US State Department. In November 2023, it again received $2.4 million from the State Department, following the $1.8 million it got from the State Department in June 2015.
The Sunday Guardian reached out to OCCRP for their response on the issue of receiving significant government funding and maintaining journalistic independence.
“Regarding your funding sources, a significant portion of your 2022 grants came from government agencies like USAID ($5,233,749), the US Department of State ($4,055,273), and the UK Foreign Office ($1,706,863). How does OCCRP ensure its journalistic independence while receiving substantial support from these institutions?
“With funding from diverse donors, including the Open Society Foundations ($2,357,504) and the Limelight Foundation ($176,840), how does OCCRP maintain transparency and avoid conflicts of interest in its investigative reporting?”
No response was received from the organization until the time this report went to press.
However, on December 2, after a media report criticized its funding patterns, OCCRP issued a statement: “OCCRP has no limits on its journalism, and no donor influences our reporting. The story, co-written by a disgruntled former member of our network, was unable to cite a single instance of inaccuracy or influence in our work and relied instead on insinuation and implication. As a donor-funded media organization, OCCRP has built into its editorial process a number of safeguards to ensure that we maintain independence and that our journalists and member centers around the world can pursue stories they think are important and worth telling.”