In “Cement’s Dirty Business,” OCCRP journalists travel across Europe to show how Romania’s $750 million cement industry now runs largely on trash, sometimes smuggled in from foreign countries with little regard for health or safety.

Laundromats are complex systems for moving money that allow corrupt politicians, organized crime figures, and wealthy businessmen to secretly invest their ill-gotten millions, launder money, evade taxes, and fulfill other goals.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) enthusiastically welcomes a promising new partnership with Luminate, the global philanthropic organization focused on empowering people and institutions to work together to build just and fair societies. Luminate’s investment of up to $800,000 over two years comes at a pivotal time for OCCRP as we work to expand our investigative reporting globally and bolster our in-house tech tools and organizational capacity. This critical core support will help OCCRP to strengthen the platform of editorial, technical, legal, and security services we provide to our network of 45 member centers around the world and to advance our wider mission of building greater accountability by exposing the abuse of power at the expense of the people.

Photo: Luminate

“Funding for investigative reporting and its global development is vital to both journalism and democracy. We thank Luminate for their support and look forward to working together as we take the next step,” said OCCRP Editor-in-Chief Drew Sullivan. “Corrupt officials and the globalized criminal services industry have tens of billions of dollars at their disposal. Those working to turn the tables operate on much less. We must all be smarter, more committed, and more innovative in our efforts to make a difference and this kind of core support helps OCCRP to do that at a critical time.”

“Today’s world needs journalistic watchdogs that transcend borders to expose organized crime and corruption and to hold those in power to account,” said Nishant Lalwani, Director at Luminate. “OCCRP has proven to be especially effective at bringing analytical power to detecting corruption and crime patterns not easily visible to the human eye. We’re excited to see OCCRP grow as an organization capable of supporting an increasingly global network and independent media at a time of unrelenting threats.”

Formerly the Government & Citizen Engagement initiative at Omidyar Network, Luminate launched this month as a global philanthropic organization whose investees and grantees deliver impact in four critical and connected areas that underpin strong societies – Civic Empowerment, Data & Digital Rights, Financial Transparency and Independent Media. The focus of Luminate’s work on independent media is to support and defend a vibrant, free press that uncovers the truth and holds power to account.

Luminate was established in October 2018 by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay and is part of The Omidyar Group.

For more information please contact Stella Roque, Chief Communications Officer at stella@occrp.org

Two OCCRP journalists were detained by armed Bulgarian police for more than seven hours on Thursday night after they followed a tip that crucial documents were being burned in a field 50 kilometers southwest of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia.

The journalists of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) face grave dangers and increasingly difficult challenges in their efforts to expose high-level corruption and government links to organized crime.

As an independent investigative journalism outlet and media development organization, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) relies heavily on copyright to guarantee correct attribution of our work. This is vital to our journalism and investigative research.

Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash

The Swedish Foundation Grävfonden announced its first scholarship program today, funding a one to three month internship with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

Erik Palm, Grävfonden

The cold-blooded murder of Slovak investigative journalist Jan Kuciak was also a cold slap across the face of modern Europe. That the public watchdogs -- the beloved members of a profession that is sometimes more reviled than admired -- could be halted simply by a brutal act of violence seems to portend a further breakdown of European values. There has been much handwringing about what to do.

Jan Kuciak

As soon as journalists published the last investigation of their murdered colleague, Slovak reporter Jan Kuciak, they immediately focused on another important issue: Why was he killed? And how did his killers know that he was working on a story about them?

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project condemns a raid at the offices of Botswana’s Center for Investigative Journalism (INK) and the harassment of Joel Konopo, a founding and managing partner of the center.

Joel Konopo

Jaroslav Strnad, the chief financial backer of the Czech president, has been secretly snapping up arms stockpiles and factories throughout the Balkans with the help of a cast of notorious local characters. The buy-up has included tens of millions of rounds of old ammunition of a type so unreliable that a previous attempt to sell it inspired a Hollywood movie.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is the Person of the Year for 2017, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an organization that has for six years recognized the individual who has done the most in the world to advance organized criminal activity and corruption.

Rodrigo Duterte (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

 Corruption is everywhere. An estimated $1 trillion is paid in bribes and another $2.6 trillion is stolen worldwide every year, according to the United Nations. These incredible sums make up five percent of the world’s economy. And they mostly come out of the pockets of the poorest of the more than seven billion inhabitants of our planet.

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Daily Maverick, amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism and Platform for the Protection of Whistleblowers in Africa have launched today an online facility for sharing a large data trove at the centre of an international corruption and money laundering scandal.

The Paradise Papers is a major new leak of documents from two offshore services firms based in Bermuda and Singapore, as well as from 19 corporate registries maintained by governments in secret offshore jurisdictions. The documents were obtained by the Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which organized a collaborative investigation with dozens of outlets across the world, including the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).​

Three years after I investigated bogus international awards sold for thousands of euros, I got invited to pick up mine -- for a small fee of just €4,750.

A screenshot of the Otherways web site.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) strongly condemns the murder of Maltese investigative reporter and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Photo credit: daphnecaruanagalizia.com

A joint investigation by Efecto Cocuyo and OCCRP ​explores the Orinoco Mining Arc — the Venezuelan government's controversial attempt to find new sources of wealth — and the devastating effects of the mining on the people who live there.

It has come to our attention that members of the current government have launched a smearing campaign against one of the members of our network.

The Azerbaijani Laundromat is a complex money-laundering operation and slush fund that handled $2.9 billion over a two-year period through four shell companies registered in the UK.