Among them, with little explanation, was the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
A filing last month, buried in legal documents in a federal prosecution in Florida, sheds light on how OCCRP landed on that list made public on March 6, 2022.
“So here’s the question: for some reason JDN was recognized but OCCRP was not. But our folks believe OCCRP is part of JDN,” reads a Feb. 24, 2022, text from a man U.S. prosecutors said was Yegor Popov, an officer in Russia’s Federal Security Service, known by its acronym FSB.
On the other end of the text message was Aleksandr Ionov, whom Popov affectionately calls Sash.
“That’s right,” Ionov responds, confirming that OCCRP is the business name for the non-profit entity Journalism Development Network Inc.
Seconds later, he texts Popov again, adding, “That's what our people asked for.”
Ionov at the time was a businessman and head of the Moscow-based non-government organization Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia. Their back and forth in February 2022 sheds light on the process through which OCCRP was targeted. Ionov told his colleague he had recommended it.
Putin was looking for a way to strike back at sanctions that followed his invasion of Ukraine, which happened on the first day of the text messages. Less than two weeks later, Putin declared OCCRP and its partner, Istories, undesirable organizations.
Fifteen days later, OCCRP published its Russian Asset Tracker, which became an important tool to aid western governments in identifying and subjecting to sanction assets of Putin cronies who provided him with financial and banking support.
Ionov’s texts about OCCRP are found on the final pages of a 51-page call log that was filed as a court document in Tampa in late August as part of Ionov’s prosecution in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Prosecutors say that Ionov and colleagues reported to handlers at the FSB and had the mission of sowing chaos and discontent in the United States.
The call logs, first reported on by RFERL, spell out in great detail how Ionov, Popov and colleagues helped kickstart attempts to raise signatures in California for a vote on whether to secede from the union.
They also specifically targeted African-Americans for messaging, helping promote protests following the death of George Floyd in Minnesota and messaging about reparations for slavery.
When discussing photos provided for a disinformation piece, Popov sent Ionov a text with an ugly racist epithet.
“Check it out, there are some (n-word) there. And the protests are about abortion,” Popov wrote on July 29, 2022.
Around this timeframe, a story appears in Russian media that effectively outs their efforts. They agree to destroy their phones, according to the call logs, and take steps to cover their tracks.
Ironically, Ionov was already the subject of a sealed indictment on July 26, 2022. Months later, on April 18, 2023, the Justice Department announced that a grand jury returned an superseding indictment against not only Ionov but Popov and Popov’s supervisor, Alexsey Sukhodolov. The indictment also charged four U.S. citizens who were part of the African People’s Socialist Party with acting as unregistered agents of Russia for helping the Russian influence campaign.
A federal jury trial for the seven defendants began on Sept. 3. The three Russians are unlikely to see the inside of a U.S, courtroom given their alleged affiliation with Russian security services. The State Department has a $10 million reward offered for information on Ionov’s election interference and that of his partners.