Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
▲ Photo by Getty Images on Unsplash
The purpose of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) is to fund investigative journalism around the world in order to prevent corruption and recover assets stolen from governments.
What problem are they trying to solve?
Corruption likely leads to trillions of dollars of government revenues lost annually worldwide, significantly decreased investment efficiency for government projects, decreased investment in secondary education, and political instability. All of these effects lead to decreased economic growth, with one meta-analysis of 72 studies estimates that a one unit increase in the Perceived Corruption Index leads to 0.59-.86 percentage point decrease in GDP growth.
What do they do?
OCCRP was founded in 2006 to combat corruption in Eastern Europe. The founders were award-winning investigative reporters who still run the organization, now working with 70 people including a leadership team, editors on each of the continents where they are active, reporters, and data scientists. We believe OCCRP’s most impactful work has historically been in combating corruption in former Soviet republics, and will likely continue to be so over the next five years. Additionally, OCCRP has expanded to six continents, producing impactful investigative reporting in many of the most corrupt countries in the world, supporting over 50 independent media outlets, and providing shared data and tools for investigative reporting. One of their key tools is ALEPH, a database of leaked evidence, previous investigations, government records, and open data that journalists can use to trace international money flows and make it possible to report on international corruption. OCCRP has also partnered with Transparency International to launch the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium (GACC) to use the results of their investigations to push for policy change and file legal action. They believe that this partnership has multiplied the impact of their investigations by a factor of five.
OCCRP plays a unique and likely crucial role in investigative journalism around the world. They have the internal local expertise, infrastructure, and partnerships with local investigative journalism networks to make it possible to investigate large-scale international corruption as they did in their central role on the Panama Papers Investigation. They estimate that their work has led to $9.6 billion in fines levied and monies seized, 694 government actions, 130 resignations or sackings, 394 official investigations, and 611 arrests.
Why do we recommend them?
We believe that OCCRP’s work is highly cost-effective at improving well-being by causing the return of significant amounts of stolen assets to low and middle income countries, and by likely decreasing corruption in many countries leading to higher growth and better governance. We have a high degree of certainty that they have led to the return of over $140 million to countries such as Uzbekistan, where additional government resources will drive significant gains in well-being for the population. This route to impact alone allows us to say with a fair amount of confidence that OCCRP is cost effective enough to be one of our recommended funding opportunities. However, less certain estimates of the impacts of OCCRPs past work on driving economic growth through lower corruption, and the expected impact of future work through projects such as increasing the efficiency of Ukraine’s future reconstruction effort, allows us to estimate that OCCRP is likely one of the few most effective charities working in global health and development. Furthermore, none of these estimates include the even harder to quantify, but likely very large impacts of their work identifying legal and financial intermediaries that enable corruption, and driving fines and the seizure of assets that end up with high income countries.
