Frequently Asked Questions on OCCRP’s Funding and Editorial Policies

Where does OCCRP get its money?

We are a donor-funded nonprofit organization. The breakdown of our donors changes every year, but in 2024 we received funding from six governmental donors, including the U.S., France, and Sweden, as well as a number of private foundations that support investigative journalism. In total, we have 50 separate grants from these donors. 

We are always working on diversifying our sources of funding in order to remain financially stable. A few years ago, we launched the “Accomplice” membership program as part of this effort. 

Transparency is important to us, and our annual reports, audits, and 990 nonprofit tax forms are all available online. We have a four-star rating from Charity Navigator, which ranks U.S.-based nonprofits on their financial accountability and transparency, and a platinum seal of transparency from Candid/Guide Star, a similar organization. 

If you’d like to learn more, here are some publicly available sources of information on our donors and finances:

• Our recent annual reports and financial statements

• Our 990 forms and audits on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer

• A list of our donors

What does OCCRP do with this funding? 

In addition to our editorial work, which includes collaborating with local journalists to produce and publish investigations, we also provide our network with research and data support. This includes access to a team of experienced cross-border researchers who can help journalists anywhere in the world track down corporate records or land titles half a world away. We also provide our network, and other journalists in need, with digital and physical security support.

Over the years, we’ve also helped independent investigative journalists in countries like Russia, Serbia, Romania, and Slovenia set up their own media organizations. We provide support, resources, experience, and encouragement, but our partners are independent of OCCRP and make their own editorial decisions.

A large proportion of the money we received from donors is also “passed through” OCCRP and distributed to local media organizations that might have trouble getting larger grants on their own.

How does OCCRP decide what stories to publish?

OCCRP is a network of journalists who live in every corner of the world. Compared to traditional media outlets, we are very decentralized, and most of our investigations come from local partners who bring us the stories they feel are important to tell. Their ideas are then developed in collaboration with a team of editors who work globally. 

Some of our stories also come from large data leaks, which we are well-equipped to work with thanks to our investigative data platform Aleph, or from human sources who come to us with tips and information about wrongdoing. Sometimes our central editorial team also decides to pursue stories or projects on topics we have special expertise in.

When a reporter in our network wants us to publish a story, we assess it along several lines. We look at whether the story uncovers wrongdoing, breaks new ground, matters to citizens and is in the public interest, and has the potential to be impactful or important, either locally or internationally. We prioritize stories that uncover significant wrongdoing, particularly related to corruption, organized crime, and their nexus with political power. Because our investigations cover very serious issues, we also need to make sure that we can prove our claims — through documentary evidence whenever possible. Our editors strive to ensure that every story we publish meets high standards of proof, fairness, and clarity. 

Can you run a story if you don’t have a donation for it?

Absolutely — and, in fact, we do not accept donations to do specific stories or projects. The process works the other way around: Our editorial team comes up with projects and story ideas, and after they are published, administrative staff members determine how to charge these stories against grants we have received. Since stories are assigned to grants retrospectively, journalists working on them do not know how they will be paid for.

Do OCCRP’s donors have any influence over editorial policy?

No. Just like a traditional newspaper, which maintains a strict “firewall” between its advertising and editorial departments, we have a division between staff who handle donations and those who produce the journalism. Donors never have access to editorial meetings or any aspect of our editorial process, nor do they have input into what stories we publish. 

We also guarantee our editorial independence by adding written language into relevant grant agreements that explicitly states we will retain complete editorial control over our work. Here is what that looks like:

Have you ever hidden your sources of funding?

No. We have always disclosed all of our donors publicly. Here are some ways in which we do it.

Do donors have a say over who OCCRP hires?

No. We hire the best-qualified people we can find, and donors do not have any input into this. A recent media report has claimed that the U.S. government has the power to “veto” our staff. This represents a serious misunderstanding of a common procurement procedure. 

OCCRP is funded by grants. We apply for competitive, publicly tendered grants on the basis that we have qualified personnel who can be responsible for spending the grant money appropriately. We often name these people on our grant applications, to support our claims that we can do the work. However, grants are legally distinct from contracts in that the donor cannot control what happens to a grant donation after it is made.

In a small number of cases, when we bid on certain types of U.S. government grants known as cooperative agreements, we are actually required to name who will be responsible for implementing the grant. This person or persons, referred to as the grant’s “key personnel,” ensures that the money we get is spent appropriately and that the work gets done. This is not an editorial role, but a logistical one. Our proposal for a cooperative agreement is assessed in part by the professional qualifications of the person who would manage it. If we win the grant and we want to later replace the people we have named on the application, we are required to find an equally well-qualified replacement for them, and the donor needs to agree that the replacement is qualified. This is only true if we ever want to replace anyone. 

In practice, a disagreement with a donor over a grant’s “key personnel” has never taken place. When we apply for a grant and nominate people to be responsible for it, we do not intend to swap them out. We have made one such change in our history, and there were no issues raised. 

OCCRP currently has four cooperative agreements, and 46 other grants. Two of our cooperative agreements require agreement on replacing key personnel. Here, you can see what this provision looks like:

Do donations come with conditions for what you can and cannot write about?

No. OCCRP only takes funding on the condition that we exercise complete editorial independence. You can read our donation acceptance policy here. We do apply for some geographically or thematically focused grants, meaning that the work must be completed in a specific country or region or broad theme. We pursue these grants only when their terms align with our mission, and when we are already trying to expand our work in these areas.   

All donors, both governmental and private, have areas of interest, and this will always be a limitation of grant-supported organizations. This is why OCCRP also raises what is known as “core funding,” which gives us funds we can use for any purpose, including reporting on countries not specifically funded by a major donor. Because of this, our journalists can follow the money wherever it takes them, and are not limited in any way by the geographical focus of a specific grant. 

When a government provides funding to OCCRP, can you still write about that country?

We can and do. We follow stories wherever they take us, and have reported in dozens of countries around the world, including the U.S., U.K., and almost every EU country. In order to minimize conflicts of interest, we don’t report in a given country with money donated by that country, and instead draw on other sources of funding. 

All reporters and editors working for OCCRP understand that they are free to report on whatever governments, policies, or corporate interests they want to. If wrongdoing is uncovered, we will publish that information, no matter who is responsible.

Why doesn’t OCCRP write about the U.S.?

We do, but the U.S. hasn’t been a historic area of focus for us. We were founded in the Balkans and slowly expanded — first to more countries in that region, where the need for independent watchdog journalism was very high, and then to neighboring regions. We focused our resources on supporting journalists and doing reporting in countries that didn’t have a lot of funding or support for journalism. The U.S., on the other hand, has a vigorous and highly competitive media sphere, with many legacy players doing excellent investigative work. It’s not an easy market to break into. We’re doing our best to catch up — we’ve now got a U.S.-based editor in place to help our journalists follow the money into the Americas, and we are building partnerships with U.S. media outlets. This year, we worked with the Boston Globe for a series on the American healthcare firm Steward. We’ve also reported on Hunter Biden’s dealings abroad and Rudy Giuliani's courting of organized crime in Ukraine. If you have a story tip about crime or corruption in the U.S., we’d like to hear it — please get in touch. 

Who started OCCRP, with what funding, and why?

In 2007, journalists Drew Sullivan and Paul Radu were working at investigative media outlets in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Romania, respectively. Drew and Paul wanted to work together on stories that cut across borders, but realized it was necessary to build a network of likeminded media to do so.

They approached some grant-giving bodies to get a sense of whether it would be possible to find funding for their idea, and ultimately received two grants, first from the U.N. and then from the U.S. government, enabling them to launch the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. 

At the time, and for a few years afterwards, OCCRP was literally a “project” — a collaborative framework that investigative reporters in different countries could use to work together more effectively. Later, it grew into a more formal organization, as well as a media outlet that published its own stories.   

Does OCCRP have a political stance? 

No. OCCRP is non-partisan and focuses on writing about crime and corruption, issues that are severely undercovered in the media. We write about governments and political figures when corruption leads us to them. We have also heavily covered the governments of highly corrupt regimes. OCCRP rarely publishes editorials, except on matters that affect the media industry itself. 

A recent story about OCCRP implied it was controlled by the U.S. government. Are you?

No, we are not. The U.S. government is a donor of ours, a fact that we have always been open about. The proportion of U.S. funding we receive has fluctuated over the years. We do not have any kind of special relationship with the U.S. or any other government. Instead, we apply to openly advertised grant tenders for media funding.

A recent story by Mediapart, which was also published by a handful of other media outlets, claimed that OCCRP has hidden the extent to which it has received U.S. government funding. In fact, we have always been open and honest about this, although we realize it may open us up to criticism. The story was unable to identify any examples of influence or bias in our stories, and everybody interviewed by Mediapart agreed that OCCRP has produced high-quality journalism over many years on a range of topics. 

The Mediapart story was written by a former member of the OCCRP network who has had multiple public personal clashes with our leadership over the years. We felt that his previous relationship with OCCRP created an unacceptable conflict of interest that should have precluded him from writing about our organization. You can read our response to the story here.

Why does OCCRP accept governmental funding at all?

We are aware that some journalists disagree on principle with accepting money from governments, especially in the U.S., where this is not the norm. But unlike many other global media outlets, we work primarily in regions without a strong tradition of independent journalism, including post-Communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, as well as parts of Oceania, Africa, and the Middle East. 

In these parts of the world, there is also very little funding for independent media from private institutional donors. We decided we would accept governmental funding so that we could grow, while creating robust guardrails to protect our journalism from donor influence. We also diversified our donor base as much as possible, applying for grants from multiple governments, as well as private foundations. We believed that if we were successful, our nonprofit media setup could become a model for others — which has turned out to be the case.

This grant money also gave us the opportunity to offer subgrants to journalists in over a dozen countries that allowed them to set up their own investigative centers, with their own independent local voices. As recipients of subgrants, these centers do not make agreements with our donors directly.

Why do governments fund media abroad? 

We can only know what is laid out in government grant tenders, which typically say they are intended to help build a media infrastructure, fight corruption, and build a robust civil society in countries without one. The U.S. and other democratic countries may see this as being in their foreign policy interests or in alignment with their values. We don’t care why they do it, because we only apply for grants when they are aligned with our own goals — to support journalists around the world and expose corruption through investigative reporting — and when they guarantee us editorial independence.

This FAQ was updated on December 7, 2024.