Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

The project has been involved in a number of high-profile investigations, including looking at the offshore services industry, organized crime ownership in football clubs, casinos and the security industry.[2][3][4] In 2013, it broke new ground on the Magnitsky case, the largest tax fraud in Russian history, and demonstrated that funds stolen from the Russian treasury ended up in a company now owned by the son of Moscow's former transportation minister. Some of the money was used to buy high-end real estate near Wall Street.[5] US prosecutors have since sought to seize $18 million in property from the company.[6]

Working with SVT Swedish Television and the TT News Agency, it uncovered that the Swedish/Finnish Telecom giant TeliaSonera (now Telia), Vimpelcom and other phone companies had paid about $1 billion in bribes to companies controlled by Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Uzbekistan's president Islam Karimov. More than $800 million in assets were seized or frozen by law enforcement after the scandal. Vimpelcom paid a $775 million fine for their part in the bribes. The story won numerous international awards.

OCCRP worked on the Panama Papers project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and Süddeutsche Zeitung producing more than 40 stories on corruption through the use of offshore entities including how friends close to Russian President Vladimir Putin were receiving large sums of money through offshore companies, how the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev owned a majority of his country's mining industry through offshore companies and how President Petro Poroshenko in Ukraine had violated Ukrainian law and avoided taxes using offshore companies.

It investigated an assassination attempt on a Russian banker which led the Moldovan government to ban the pro-Russian Patria political party from the 2014 elections and the party's leader to flee the country.[7][8] It also looked at a massive money laundering scheme, the Russian Laundromat, that moved tens of billions of dollars into Europe using offshore companies, fake loans and bribed Moldovan judges. Some of the Russian banks involved were owned in part by Igor Putin, a cousin of Russian President Vladimir Putin.[9]

Its stories on Montenegro's long-time President and Prime Minister Milo Đukanović led to street demonstrations, calls for his removal and intense scrutiny by the European Union and NATO of its membership applications. Two series looked at the cozy ties between Đukanović and organized crime. One series traced the President's family-owned bank, Prva Banka (First Bank), and how the president privatized it to his brother cheaply, moved massive state funds into the bank and then loaned the money out to his family, friends and organized crime on overly favorable terms. When the bank failed under the weight of these bad loans, the president bailed it out with taxpayer money. The Central Bank said the government lied about repaying the loan simply shuttling funds back and forth and claiming the loan was repaid.[10] A second series examined how the president through his staff kept close relationships to international drug traffickers like Darko Saric, to the point where municipalities controlled by the president's party gave prime coastal property almost for free to the wanted kingpin. It also showed how the Italian mafia was smuggling cigarettes to Italy from an island off the coast of Montenegro owned by his good friend Stanko Subotic and controlled by his head of security.[11]

Drew Sullivan said that Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte "has made a mockery of rule of law in his country. While he is not your typical corrupt leader, he has empowered corruption in an innovative way. His death squads have allegedly focused on criminals but, in fact, are less discriminating. He has empowered a bully-run system of survival of the fiercest. In the end, the Philippines are more corrupt, more cruel, and less democratic."[12]

Since 2012, OCCRP has dedicated the Person of the Year Award that "recognizes the individual or institution that has done the most to advance organized criminal activity and corruption in the world".[13]

• 2012 – Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan – Other mentions: Naser Kelmendi, Milo Đukanović, Vladimir Putin, Miroslav Mišković, Islam Karimov, Darko Saric[14]
• 2013 – Parliament of Romania – Other mentions: Darko Šarić, Gulnara Karimova[15]
• 2014 – Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation – Other mentions: Viktor Orbán, Milo Đukanović[16]
• 2015 – Milo Đukanović, Prime Minister of Montenegro – Other mentions: First Family of Azerbaijan, Nikola Gruevski[17]
• 2016 – Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela – Other mentions: Rodrigo Duterte, Bashar al-Assad, ISIL/ISIS, Raúl Castro/Luis Alberto Rodríguez, Vladimir Putin[13]
• 2017 – Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philippines – Other mentions: Jacob Zuma, Robert Mugabe[12]
• 2018 – Danske Bank, for the money laundering scandal[18]
• 2019 – Joseph Muscat, for the flourishing of criminality and corruption under his leadership as Prime Minister of Malta[19]

The website of the organization provides daily updates about alleged instances of corruption and organized crime around the world, which reach 6 million readers every month.[20]

OCCRP and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty[47] journalist Khadija Ismayilova, based in Baku, Azerbaijan became a cause célèbre when she was blackmailed by an unknown party with video captured in her bedroom using a camera installed in the wall. The camera was planted two days after OCCRP/RFERL published a story[48] by Ismayilova about the presidential family in Azerbaijan and how it secretly owned Azerfon, a mobile phone company with a monopoly 3G license. A note threatened to show the videos if Ismayilova did not stop her work. She refused and the videos were shown on at least two websites. Ismayilova complained that prosecutors were doing very little[49] to identify the culprits who are widely believed to have been the government of Azerbaijan.

After this incident, Ismayilova went on to publish articles showing that the first family also owned shares in six major goldfields[50] and they owned one of the construction companies that built the new showcase Crystal Hall[51] auditorium in Baku, the site of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest. She was detained by state prosecutors in December 2014 on charges that she incited a fellow journalist to commit suicide by denying him a chance to return to his job at Radio Free Europe, despite the fact that she had no hiring authority. The journalist later retracted his statements on his Facebook page and attempted to flee to Moscow. The arrest was criticized around the world by dozens of governments, media and civil society organizations.

OCCRP started the Khadija Project,[52] an investigative reporting effort to continue Ismayilova's work. Editor Drew Sullivan, when initiating the project, said if governments arrest one investigative reporter, twenty would take their place. They vowed to look at the political elite in Azerbaijan and how they have materially benefited from their high positions. OCCRP did more than a dozen major investigations including some using the Panama Papers. OCCRP found the First Family of Azerbaijan had more than $140 million in high end London Property, owned a large percentage of the luxury hotel and banking businesses in Baku, had received more than $1 billion in bribes from telecom companies and other stories.

Ismayilova was released from prison on May 25, 2016.