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

Police arrested on Wednesday a Solomon Islands lawmaker and charged him with corruption for allegedly misusing a shipping grant worth more than US$374,000 to purchase motor powered canoes for his political supporters, Radio New Zealand reported. 

Hours after he was transferred to a new prison, infamous Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, 89, was found on Tuesday beaten to death in his cell, theBoston Globe reported.

Italian authorities arrested 14 alleged members of a Camorra clan for trafficking crack, cocaine and hashish along the coast near Naples. Three days earlier, Corriere del Mezzogiorno reported that camorristi put a bounty on a drug-sniffing police dog.

Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency summoned on Tuesday the deputy chairman of the Chinese-Indonesian conglomerate Lippo Group as a witness in a bribery case related to a $US21 billion construction project, Reuters reported.

Organized criminals as well as ordinary citizens have cause to guard their privacy with encryption. With governments increasingly resorting to digital surveillance, people on both sides of the line between right and wrong are using it.

Encrypted message (Photo:OCCRP)

Despite being under scrutiny from human rights groups, far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro won the presidential election in Brazil on Sunday after having based his campaign on fighting against corruption and organized crime.

Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte temporarily placed the Bureau of Customs under military control after two massive shipments of illegal drugs each valued at over US$100 million evaded detection in the port of Manila, the Associated Press reported. 

The recent surge of violence in Mozambique at the hand of extremist militants has been funded by the country’s illicit economy, according to a new report by theGlobal Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Italian authorities seized assets worth €55 million (US$63 million) and arrested an Italian suspect while trying to take down a Maltese fuel smuggling network, the Malta Independent reported on Sunday.

Police in Barcelona detained several suspects and searched 40 apartments during a massive operation on Monday morning that targeted drug dealers in the city’s Raval neighborhood.

The US Department of Justice is seeking documents from the world’s largest commodities trader, Glencore, over intermediary companies that it uses in Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Nigeria, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

In a case that has rocked the college basketball world, a Manhattan federal court on Wednesday handed out a guilty verdict to two Adidas officials and an aspiring NBA agent in connection with their schemes to secretly pay top high school basketball recruits to secure their commitments to Adidas-sponsored college teams, the New York Times reported.

A suspect in the brutal rape and murder of a Bulgarian journalist has been apprehended. But questions remain about whether Viktoria Marinova’s coverage of a procurement scandal was the real reason for her killing.

Viktoria Marinova (Photo: Facebook)

Interpol called on Wednesday for more global cooperation in stemming theft, forgery, and illicit trafficking of cultural heritage after a symposium in Hanoi with Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security.

Joining the biggest caravan of Central American migrants heading North is not just a matter of escaping gang violence, it is a better alternative to more dangerous and expensive human smuggling routes,the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

Madagascar’s new business proposal for ridding itself of its vast stockpiles of illegally-harvested rosewood was met with a resounding “no” from a committee that regulates world trade in endangered species, because the proposal involved paying off local timber barons.

Mozambican authorities named a former Labor Minister as the main suspect in a corruption case involving the illicit removal of some US$1.7 million (100 million meticais) from the National Social Security Institute (INSS), Noticias reported Wednesday.

A United States appeals court allowed a lawsuit from six former child slaves to be reinstated on Tuesday against the U.S. section of Nestle SA and Cargill Inc. for aiding and perpetuating their captivity on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire).

Leaders from 80 countries recognized wildlife trafficking as organized crime, theInternational Institute for Sustainable Development reported on Tuesday.