- The OCCRP allegations against journalist Stefan Candea
OCCRP publisher Drew Sullivan, together with the board of directors of the OCCRP, have made defamatory comments against Romanian freelance journalist Stefan Candea, co-writer of this article. “Stefan Candea, who appears to have played a critical role in the development of your article, has had personal conflicts with OCCRP and business relationships with one of the OCCRP founders. The journalists among us would have precluded the participation of someone with such obvious conflict,” wrote the board, of which Drew Sullivan is a member.
Stefan Cande is a pioneer in international collaborations producing investigative reporting. In 2001, he co-founded the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism (RCIJ), a non-profit journalistic NGO. With the RCIJ, he contributed to the development of transnational investigative reporting, bringing together several East European media.
Stefan Candea became a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) in 2006, and took part in the ICIJ’s first major international investigation, Secrecy for Sale, published in 2013. In 2015 he co-founded the media network European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), of which Mediapart is a member. Stefan Candea is today both a freelance journalist and a part-time coordinator for the EIC.
Stefan Candea has never had “business relationships” with Paul Radu, a Romanian journalist who co-founded the OCCRP. During the 2000s, Candea and Radu both worked with the RCIJ, which took part in the creation of the OCCRP as of 2007.
In 2011, Stefan Candea, writing in the name of the RCIJ, sent an email to other members of the OCCRP in which he explained why the RCIJ had decided to leave the OCCRP. He explained that this decision was taken because the RCIJ considered that the US-registered structures (Journalism Development Group and subsequently the Journalism Development Network) used by Drew Sullivan for the management of the OCCRP were not sufficiently transparent regarding the origins of funds they received nor the use that was made of them. He also argued that the OCCRP did not give its media members adequate power over the governance of the organisation.
Following that, Paul Radu, who disagreed with Stefan Candea’s view, decided to leave the RCIJ for the OCCRP.
The content of the email sent by Stefan Candea in the name of the RCIJ was factual and measured, and was only concerned with the organisation of the OCCRP. The least that can be said is that the investigation we publish here confirms the initial elements he was able to gather at the time.
Stefan Candea never criticised the quality of the OCCRP’s journalism. Indeed, in his 2011 email he wrote that the RCIJ had “great respect for the stories OCCRP produced and for the network of journalists”, that it “doesn't intend to create conflicting sides” and that it would continue to authorise its journalists to “participate in any OCCRP project on an individual basis”.
Stefan Candea raised the episode in 2011 in his PhD thesis, entitled Cross-border Investigative Journalism: a critical perspective completed at the University of Westminster in London in 2020. He also returned to the subject in a 2021 article commissioned by the Berliner Gazette on the occasion of a conference.
Stefan Candea is not at the origin of the investigation published here, which was in fact initiated by John Goetz, an award-winning investigative journalist with German broadcaster NDR, and who was later joined in the project by his colleague Armin Ghassim. Because of his PhD thesis and his wide knowledge of international networks of investigative journalism, Stefan Candea was employed by NDR to work on the investigation on a freelance basis.
At the end of August 2024, NDR invited Mediapart, Drop Site News (US), Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italy) and Reporters United (Greece) to join the project. After NDR decided to censor the broadcasting of its investigation, Stefan Candea continued to help Mediapart and its three other media partners to continue with and finalise the project.
The articles that we publish today are the result of the collective work of eight journalists from five different media, who have together gathered and verified the information they contain in all independence, and with the strictest respect of journalistic ethics.
We consider that the OCCRP attacks against Stefan Candea are an attempt to divert attention from the facts reported here by trying to discredit some of the journalists who discovered them.
Drew Sullivan informed us that he had decided, even before the publication of our reports, to publish an article denouncing our working methods. In preparation of this counter-article, he sent us 13 questions on November 8th 2024. They contain defamatory and unsubstantiated allegations, notably against Stefan Candea, and no factual elements.
We have until now refused to answer these, on the one hand because it is impossible to evaluate the quality of an article before having read it, and on the other because Drew Sullivan refused to supply us with the factual elements he claims to have gathered and which supposedly support the accusations he levels against us. “Since you are writing a story, it is up to you to prove allegations, not us. You will get access during the discovery process in court,” he wrote on November 19th, in a reply to our decision.
- Answers received from the board of directors of the OCCRP
Drew Sullivan has shared with us, the Board of Directors of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, the questions you have sent to him. Because we are a governance board and not an operational one, we do not intend to directly answer the questions that pertain to specific operational matters.
That said, we are concerned about the thrust of your piece. Your questions seem to indicate that you believe the United States government has exerted control over the journalism OCCRP has produced. It is our strongly held and unanimous position that this is wholly untrue.
What is true is that OCCRP has accepted funding from U.S. Government. We understand that reasonable people may believe that's a bad idea, especially since it is not the norm in journalism in the United States (although government support of journalism is not uncommon in Europe and elsewhere). This was thoroughly discussed years ago when OCCRP was founded. The Board at that time – which included several of us who remain on the Board and whose personal reputations as journalists and executives are impeccable – decided that it was worth the tradeoff for the investigative journalism OCCRP could produce with this financial support..
We understood, as perhaps you do not, that to do impactful, cross-border investigative reporting in many regions of the world would require not only philanthropic funding, but support from Western governments who understand that journalism is a prerequisite for democracy. That includes not only the United States, but many of the countries in the European Union.
From the beginning, we made sure that government grants had impenetrable guardrails that would protect the journalism produced by OCCRP. As we indicated in a previous response to your colleague, we are confident that no government or donor has exerted editorial control over the OCCRP reporting. Seventeen years later, we are entirely comfortable with our decision, and enormously proud of the journalism the organization and its partners have produced.
We also want to point out that Stefan Candea, who appears to have played a critical role in the development of your article, has had personal conflicts with OCCRP and business relationships with one of the OCCRP founders. The journalists among us would have precluded the participation of someone with such obvious conflict. We hope that your story will include appropriate disclosures.
We trust that you will take this Board’s perspective into due consideration, and to honestly assess whether your piece is fair and truthful. If it is published, we will be prepared to take whatever action is necessary to defend the organization from inaccurate and/or malicious reporting.
Sincerely,
Marina Gorbis, Board President
Anders Alexanderson, Treasurer
David Boardman
Sue Gardner
Sanita Jemberga
Paul Radu
Tifani Roberts
Drew Sullivan
- Answers received from OCCRP publisher Drew Sullivan
(An explanatory note from Mediapart: copied below are only the answers we received about information contained in our report. We have also chosen not to cite the defamatory comments made by Drew Sullivan against Mediapart, its media partners, and the journalist Stefan Candea, co-writer of this article.)
A general response from Drew Sullivan:
Your questions seem to indicate that you believe the United States government has exerted control over the journalism OCCRP has produced. And yet you appear to have no evidence to support that belief, only insinuations, incorrect interpretations, and imputations. We ask you again to honestly assess whether the piece you are developing is fair and truthful. And we reiterate that if it is published, we are prepared to take whatever action is necessary to defend OCCRP against inaccurate and/or malicious reporting. Judging by OCCRP’s many international awards for quality journalism, the journalism industry doesn’t believe this thesis either. OCCRP works with the most discerning and skeptical journalists in the world and could not do so if, for even a minute, they suspected us of favoring or killing stories to help a government. […]
OCCRP was a pioneer in using media development money to improve investigative journalism around the world. We were an early hybrid – part media development organization and part news media. Before OCCRP, media development programs had few successes in creating follow-the-money style investigative reporting. We were able to design a system that worked, even as we balanced the required oversight and transparency of using taxpayer money with the independence and safety required by investigative reporters working under autocratic regimes. We became an effective incubator, and organizations like iStories, KRIK, Rise Project, CIN, CINS, Ostro and more than a dozen others may not exist without our involvement, resources, experience and encouragement.
We understood at the beginning that taking government money was controversial but private institutional donors were not working in Central Asia, the Balkans and the Pacific. We believed there would be nothing in these countries unless we tried. Because of our work, there are vibrant media — often the only remaining independent media — in many countries.
More specific answers (questions and topics in bold, followed by Drew Sullivan’s replies):
Question: About the grant given in May 2008 to the OCCRP by USAID, with funds secretly provided by the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) of the U.S. Department of State, and the fact that OCCRP chose not to mention INL in its official history, and to mention only the first grant received from the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF):
Reply: JDG [the company Journalism Development Group, who managed OCCRP at the time] applied in March 2007 for the OCCRP project and was awarded a grant that year for $375,000. It was extended twice – once for $375,000 and once for $187,500 going through 2010. The link you sent also shows the grant that JDG got to build CIN [The Bosnian Center for investigative reporting] reback in 2003 – a three-year $1.687 million grant.
We mention in our history that UNDEF was the founding OCCRP grant. That is true and as such is important. It does not surprise us that USAID considers itself as the grantor that made OCCRP possible and clearly it played a major role. We saw the UNDEF money as the first money promoting our concept. That is true. USAID was the first money that went into what became the legal entity - JDN. That is true too. We’re happy to state for the record we think USAID’s belief they were the founding organization has credibility. We could not have done it without them.
USAID has funded dozens of investigative reporting organizations around the world over the years and has been a major player when most institutional donors have not funded media in places like Central Asia, the Pacific and Eastern Europe. The whole point of OCCRP seeking governmental funding was that almost no one (except OSF) was significantly funding media in the places where we worked. We made the choice between taking government money or not existing. Hindsight shows that this was the correct move. We think we have done an enormous amount of good over the years by using the approach we did and we will not apologize for it. The U.S. Government has never interfered with our reporting and its funding has helped create independent investigative reporting where there would otherwise be none.
Many other organizations including Forbidden Stories, ICIJ and others, also take government money, as do dozens of investigative centers around the world. If you have supposed examples of any government funding influencing specific stories or reporting projects, please provide those to us, so we can understand and address your suppositions. If you do not have examples, you might question the basic premise of your reporting.
About the potential ethical problem related to the fact that a journalistic organization like OCCRP accepted a grant from INL:
INL is not a law enforcement bureau. It has no policing powers, cannot detain anyone and has no ability to compel information from people. Its core competencies are listed as “helping partner governments assess, build, reform, and sustain competent and legitimate criminal justice systems, and developing and implementing the architecture necessary for international drug control and cross-border law enforcement cooperation” through “foreign assistance, bilateral diplomacy, multilateral engagement, and reporting, sanctions, and rewards.”
In its current form we do not consider INL funding as problematic as long as their grants meet our standards of not interfering with editorial practices.
While the 2007 grant apparently came from the INL budget, we dealt only with USAID staff for the whole history of the first and follow up grants (from 2007-2010). After the initial award in 2007, we have no insight into what budget was used and whether it was still INL or USAID money. What matters is that no one at INL in any way ever sought to guide our reporting, nor has anyone at USAID.
We approached a number of people at USAID looking for funding. We were sent to talk to INL which we were told had money for crime and corruption related projects. INL suggested we apply for an unsolicited proposal. We did and received the award. USAID’s Meg Gaydosik later told us that INL didn’t have the infrastructure to manage a grant and therefore passed the money to USAID. As we understand it, the money was transferred to USAID and was retained with them through the lifetime of the first grant. Gaydosik oversaw that grant. USAID determined whether the grant was successful and if we were to get renewals. All the paperwork was in the name of USAID. We sent reports to them. We acknowledge the original, limited contact with INL which had no substantive involvement. We assume that you will attempt to confirm these facts with INL and USAID, specifically Meg Gaydosik.
[…] For the 2007-2010 grants, as far as [we] know and remember, INL never asked for any information about the grants, never contacted [us] or anyone at OCCRP, nor followed up with the grant results. We don’t recall talking to the original INL program manager after our proposal was approved. We’re not sure what role if any they played after the award.
We don’t have insights into exactly why things were done this way with INL and USAID. We believe simply that Mr. Hodgkinson liked the plan. There were very few, if any, programs to address organized crime in those days. He had the money and supported what he thought was valuable work. He didn’t have resources to administer it and passed it on to USAID.
About US government and other governments funding:
See separate table which covers the period 2014 - 2023 inclusive. Total U.S. Government funding over that period excluding all subgrants was approximately $23 million. Including all subgrants, U.S. Government funding was $44 million.
About the fact that Drew Sullivan considers that our figure regarding the proportion of US government funding (representing according to us 52% of OCCRP’s budget from 2014 to 2023) is not accurate, because subgrants redistributed by OCCRP to other organizations should be excluded from the calculation:
If you are saying pass through government funds financially benefit OCCRP or benefit us in some other way, that makes little sense. Tranparency International’s funding is for activism, in which we play no role. We do not tell them how to spend their funds, how to do their activism or how to set their goals. The whole Global Anti Corrution Consortium project relies on the independence of both parties, but someone had to receive the money initially.
Reporters Shield is now a fully independent organization with a separate mission that does not benefit OCCRP financially and OCCRP no longer has financial or programmatic control although OCCRP personnel sit on the board.
JDN [Journalism Development Network, the non profit organisation managing OCCRP] receives almost no financial benefit from subgranting. Under U.S. Government regulations, we currently take 15% of the first $25k of a subgrant (i.e. $3,750) to cover administrative costs, and thereafter nothing (for completeness, note that in the period under discussion we took 13.8% of the first $25k). Large subgrants are effectively therefore money in, money out, and are not available to fund JDN’s own activities beyond that first $3,750. Hence why we state, correctly, that expenditure excluding subgrants gives the most accurate measure of JDN’s own activity.
Could you please provide the contracts/agreements between OCCRP and these governments? Do these contracts include similar clauses as the ones included in the US government contracts (veto of key personnel, specific purposes grants...)?
All governments have their own clauses. None of them restricts our editorial independence, staffing, or mission. OCCRP’s grant agreements and evaluation reports contain proprietary and confidential information. We are willing to provide them to an independent third-party (at your expense) to confirm to you that they contain no evidence of government interference but will not provide them to you, as you are competitors of OCCRP. […]
About an email sent on October 5th, 2005 to OCCRP reporters, in which Drew Sullivan wrote: “John [Goetz, reporter at the German television NDR] is advertising that OCCRP employee or member told him that OCCRP doesn’t do stories on [the] U.S. If that’s your opinion it’s fine, and in the early years it was mostly true as we couldn't use U.S. Government or Soros money for US stories”:
Like nearly all donors, the U.S. Government provides grants with geographical focuses. U.S. Government funding is provided under foreign assistance programs which ultimately must benefit journalism in the foreign country it was designed for. This certainly does not prevent us from reporting on American companies abroad or even the U.S. Government abroad. We note that this is also common with many private donors that limit their grants geographically or thematically. OCCRP has core funding that we can use to do stories in countries where we do not have grant money.
We’ve demonstrated that we have reported on US interests. Our series on the U.S. buying weapons in the Balkans for Saudi Arabia and UAE which ended up with ISIS is one example. We have also written about US companies like our recent stories on Steward Healthcare and MPT. OCCRP also wrote about Rudy Giuliani's visit to Ukraine and his meetings with organized crime and Hunter Biden’s ethically questionable business partners. OCCRP is not afraid or limited in any way from doing the stories it wants to, including on donors.
The statements in the questions refer to our earliest years when we did not yet have core funding to report everywhere. All non-profits must eventually get grants that allow them to get global or regional coverage, a limitation of the model that can be overcome.
On July 31 2009 Drew Sullivan wrote to the OCCRP group email: “One of our board members is interested in the case in Albania with the highways and the American firm Bechtel. Does anybody know any Albanian reporters (or anyone for that matter) that might know a lot about this?” A Romanian reporter responds: “in Romania there's a huge scandal concerning the "Bechtel highway". if you need to know more, just let me know”. A Macedonian reporter recommends a journalist from Albania and adds more information. Did OCCRP not investigate Bechtel because it was a US company?
[…] OCCRP has no limitations on reporting on US companies and has done so many times over the years including recently as cited above. Neither Paul nor Drew remembers what happened in this case, but we would have cooperated on a project if we were asked to and the project made sense for us. […] We get dozens of ideas, tips, referrals and other leads per month that could potentially end up in a story. Most are rejected or ignored for dozens of reasons. Pulling out two cases from a history of thousands of potential story leads proves nothing.
About US Government grants that OCCRP must spend to perform journalistic work about specific countries and issues, like ”Balancing the Russian Media Sphere”, “uncovering and combatting Venezuelan corruption”, “Supporting civil society in Montenegro”:
They do not influence our agenda. Every grant is our choice and our plan. Every geographical area we bid on is our choice and depends on our partners and whether we can successfully do the work in the time and resources allotted. OCCRP primarily focuses on cross border stories which go across a number of countries. In the end, there are an infinite number of stories we can choose from. That doesn’t sound like much control. […
We look at the individual grants. Does it support investigative journalism? Does it do so without any limitations or impediments? Does it have extraneous goals or deliverables that are not consistent with our mission? That is what is important to us. Every grant ultimately needs to meet the mission of the donor and the mission, standards and ethics of the journalism organization. When those align, we bid on the grant. We can’t divine and evaluate every intention a donor has.
About grants that OCCRP must spend to perform journalistic work about specific countries and issues, which has been awarded by INL, the law enforcement bureau of the U.S. Department of State.
In 2011, DoS/INL granted $200,156 until April 2014, to OCCRP about Mexico
In November 2022, DoS/INL granted $ 999,778 to OCCRP “to strengthen the capacity of journalists in Malta and Cyprus, expose crime and corruption, and accelerate the impact of investigative reporting in the two countries and regionally”. $716,329 from this specific program has been spent in 2022 and 2023. Both topic and period match with OCCRP’s reporting on the project “Cyprus Confidential”. At the beginning of December 2023, a team of US financial crime experts (including FBI and FinCen agents) arrived in Cyprus to assist with a government probe into suspected Russian sanctions violations following the “Cyprus Confidential” investigation
As we said, we sought grants from publicly-announced tenders that met our needs and goals and proposed a program consistent with our requirements, ensuring complete independence of stories selected and no requirements posing any ethical issues. The grants did not stipulate any stories or issue areas. We met all deliverables as always. We did not know the impact of the stories - whether law enforcement investigations, sanctions or seizures - until they were publicly announced and had no communications with the government.
OCCRP does not publish on its website its financial audits filed to the U.S. Government, and does not include in its annual reports the full financial statements included in these audits, especially the parts about governments’ funding and the “schedule of expenditures of federal awards”.
These documents are available online in many places. Our practices are in line with many other non-profit media and more transparent than most.
Why don’t you publish on OCCRP’s website, in a simple and accessible way, information about the amount and percentage of your funding and spending provided by governments?
Frankly, this is the first time anyone has brought this issue up. We note that there is no information on how your organizations are funded on your sites -- nor financial statements or audits. There is very little information at all in fact.
OCCRP’s website displayed from at least 2010, at the bottom of its frontpage, a disclaimer, including graphic logos, saying “OCCRP is made possible by USAID” and a few other donors. However, the mention “made possible by” has been removed from the front page on 28 December 2018, and the logos of the main donors have been removed on 9 November 2019.
These are only style changes made periodically in regular updates of the site. We have consistently kept donors on the site. As we got more donors, we eliminated logos for brevity.
US Government officials told us that OCCRP requested and obtained a partial branding waiver from the U.S. Government, allowing OCCRP to remove this disclaimer from OCCRP’s website frontpage.
We think that we have provided all the information necessary so that people know who we are and our practices are consistent with what other NGOs do. Increasingly, the dangers reporters face around the world have led to less and less transparency by non-profit media. We understand that and try to balance transparency with safety needs.
We also note that our long-form 990 tax filings are available online going back to 2012, and audited accounts are available from 2015 onwards. Consequently, we think that any implication that our audited financial statements are not available to the general public would be materially misleading.
The branding waiver allows OCCRP, among other things, to not brand our website or stories with the USAID and Department of State logos and name. However, we went ahead and listed these U.S. Government organizations (and their logos before we removed logos) as donors on the site to be transparent. OCCRP sought the waiver because we had multiple donors and needed greater flexibility in presentation. Labeling every single story that had even partial U.S. Government funding would be both onerous and misleading. To be consistent, we’d have to mention all other donors who made partial contributions to stories. We have 47 donors.
Brand waivers are always requested at the beginning of a grant unless they are delayed by workload.
About the “veto on key personnel” clause included in USAID’s cooperative agreement with OCCRP:
This is false. They have zero control of Drew or any other staff in doing our jobs. All of our US grants are competitively bid in a public process. During bidding, we have to identify someone who is responsible for managing the grant. The scoring points assigned to our proposal are decided in part by the skills and experience of that person. That person may have no role in the editorial process and is in fact, sometimes a program officer. If we seek to change that person after we are awarded a grant, the donor has the right to verify that the new person is as qualified to manage the grant as the person being replaced (the veto they refer to). The key point is that these are two completely different roles. The person overseeing the grant has nothing to do with the person who oversees the editorial process which is the regional editor and ultimately the editor-in-chief. Therefore, the government has zero control of our editorial process and our selection of editors. If they don’t like them, they will not award us the grant but once they award it they can’t do anything about our journalism. This whole process is done under strict public procurement rules. […]
About OCCRP not being allowed to use US Government money to report on US matters:
This is again not accurate. As we mentioned, this funding comes from foreign assistance appropriations and as far as we know cannot be used for domestic matters. We solve this limitation by having many donors.
Did OCCRP inform its reporters, member media and external media partners about the four points below?
- The fact that half of OCCRP’s total operational budget has been provided by USG over the period 2014-23
- The existence of clauses like the veto on key personnel
- The fact that OCCRP is not allowed to use USG money to report on US matters
- The existence of USG funding related to certain countries, including Russia, Cyprus and Venezuela. Authoritarian governments, especially in Russia, Central Asia and South America, may consider the reporters working for OCCRP or in partnership with OCCRP as being foreign agents, with potential serious consequences for the safety of these reporters.
Your “4 information” points are a construct made up by you and they have no relevance in the real world. All of the journalists working with us know that we receive U.S. Government funding. Some of them accept government funding directly from governments in some form as well. They could not operate without it.
Furthermore, all of our members and partners retain full control over their editorial process when working with OCCRP. Even if we provide reporting and data, they are free to write anything they wish on their sites. Even if we give them money, they are free to write whatever they want.
All partners know exactly who we are, what we get and they themselves agree to whatever they receive. We have since explained your 4 information points to them essentially saying what we said here. We have received no complaints or clarifications.
[About the last point] You are not asking a question but stating your opinion. If you are correct, you should not want to write this story when you don’t have any visibility on how our system works. We have many ways to protect the reporters which we cannot discuss in detail. We have different pots of money and safety is a consideration in what people receive. Many of the at-risk reporters do not get U.S. Government money from us and you should not paint all reporters and all member centers with the same brush. We have many ways to help organizations which are done in close consultation with members who ultimately make their own decisions. Receiving any foreign money whether from a government or individual can be punished with a foreign agent designation.
About the creation of the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium (GACC) on the initiative of the US government and in the framework of a tender issued by the US government:
The GACC proposal we submitted was designed by OCCRP and Tranparency International and we chose to bid on it in partnership. OCCRP is a believer in the GACC approach and we were considering such an approach in the years prior to the release of the tender. It has proved to successfully increase impact by a factor of five over just investigative journalism alone. While some initially found this approach controversial, it has since been adopted now by other media.
We believe that GACC has proved to be highly successful. Other media now have adopted this approach.
GACC aims to increase the impact of investigative reporting in the fight against corruption. The advocacy and legal work that utilize the investigative reporting are undertaken by civil society organizations, not OCCRP. GACC funders do not have influence over the selection of advocacy or legal cases pursued by GACC’s civil society partners. There is no limitation based on anyone’s definition of “US interests” and cases have led to advocacy in the United States.
About the content of the evaluation audit of GACC’s impact done in 2021, and that OCCRP chose not to publish:
The evaluation was conducted by external experts and we stand by its findings. We understand the executive summary has been provided by Transparency International. We have not evaluated how our stories have harmed or helped any specific donor’s interests which we are generally not aware of. We can say OCCRP’s work has led to almost $11 billion returned to governments around the world through fines and seizures.
About the fact that in several public documents, US institutions, including the White House and the Department of State, described GACC as a tool designed to weaponize OCCRP stories in order to trigger civil society actions, sanctions, legal proceedings and policy changes in non-US countries. A 2021 White House brief described GACC as part of US Government effort to “enlist the private sector as a full- fledged partner in the fight against corruption, [...] unleashing private sector advocacy for anti-corruption reform”:
GACC aims to increase the impact of investigative reporting in the fight against corruption. The advocacy and legal work that utilizes the investigative reporting is undertaken by civil society organizations, not OCCRP. Many non-profit media organizations now have impact programs or departments. None of the collaborations pursued as part of GACC influenced OCCRP’s editorial decisions; it is rather about expanding the impact of the reporting OCCRP chooses to undertake.
From December 2017 to August 2022 the OCCRP executive with responsibility on GACC was Camille Eiss, who was “senior advisor anti-corruption” at the Department of State before joining OCCRP. Then in September 2022, she came back to Department of State, as “Senior Advisor, Office of Sanctions Coordination”. Do you consider that this is a conflict of interest? Why did you choose to hire Mrs Eiss?
We hired Ms Eiss because she is a talented thought leader in the anti-corruption space. We are satisfied that at OCCRP she followed all rules and procedures required of her in her dealings with her former employer. You need to ask her the rest of your question as it did not occur at OCCRP.
In May 2024, OCCRP partnered with RUSI's Center for Finance and Security to publish a policy brief on enablers of sanctions circumvention. The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) defines itself as the world’s oldest and the UK’s leading defense and security think tank. RUSI's governing body includes 3 senior vice presidents, one of them is David Petraeus, the former head of the CIA and one of the partners of the Global Investment Fund, KKR. RUSI's board of advisors includes Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom, chairman of the Advisory Board of Thales (UK), who has a long history involvement at the top of UK defence establishment, as he was Minister of State for Defence Procurement and sat in the advisory council of the national security think tank, the Henry Jackson Society.
RUSI analyzed investigative stories that OCCRP and other media outlets had published and identified policy recommendations based on this analysis. OCCRP did not collaborate with RUSI on any investigations or reporting.
About Aleph’s Share feature. OCCRP made the choice that anybody can register to access its Aleph data platform, even under an assumed name. We tested what can be seen by an outsider and we found out that you offer a feature allowing users to start their own Investigation and invite other Aleph users to join. The feature used to let anybody check and search by name if specific journalists are part of the Aleph system and exposed full names and personal email addresses.
During a tour of the OCCRP office in Sarajevo in June 2023, Mr Sullivan showed to NDR reporters a room dedicated to journalists coming ”from typically Central Asia”. Mr. Sullivan emphasized the need to keep journalists from such countries hidden from the camera, in order that their involvement with OCCRP is not publicly revealed : “They live in dangerous places. They live in places like Kyrgyzstan, which is now, you know, run by a corrupt government. (...) And so, you know, we have to protect those who works with us very carefully.”
- Do you think that the Aleph feature described above could endanger these journalists whose collaboration with OCCRP must stay secret, as autocratic regimes could use this Aleph feature to check if these journalists work with OCCRP?
Early September 2023, after a talk in confidence between a reporter involved in this research (Stefan Candea) and a member of OCCRP, during which Stefan Candea stressed that this feature could cause security problems for journalists working under autocratic regimes, this feature was changed and users can now be found only by using their exact email address.
- Do you wish to comment? Was this feature actually a security flaw? Did you fix it because you were warned by the OCCRP reporter talking in confidence with Stefan Candea?
- Did you inform all your reporters whose collaboration with OCCRP must be kept secret about the problem related to this feature ? Did you take security measures like asking these reporters to change their email addresses?
- Did you investigate whether this feature was used by authorities in authoritarian countries (like Russia, Azerbaijan or Kyrgyzstan) to prove connections between certain local journalists and OCCRP?
- Do you think that the change is enough to protect the security of reporters whose collaboration with OCCRP must be kept secret, as autocratic regimes could obtain their exact email addresses, and in this case still check as of today if these reporters work with OCCRP?
Like our other tools we make available, Aleph is a popular tool used by tens of thousands of reporters around the world. It is promoted in most conferences and taught around the world. Having an Aleph account does not mean someone works with us. Our security team concluded that this feature posed little risk but since you are likely to make a big stink about this finding that we have changed it in the event someone will seek to misuse it.
Last January we disabled new sign-ups to Aleph. Persons are now vetted before an account is given further limiting any risk. […]
About the fact that in October 2023, Drew Sullivan requested that OCCRP journalists do not communicate with NDR reporters researching OCCRP:
None of this is unethical. We suggested your reporters talk to our journalists. We also warned them you have been fabricating and misrepresenting your motives and focus. […] Sullivan encouraged them to do what he thought was best but our partner centers are not beholden to anyone. They act on their own and while they may take what we say into consideration, they will make up their own minds.
About the fact that in October 2023, M. Sullivan requested that OCCRP journalists tell M. Sullivan if they talked to NDR reporters, and if yes, what they said to NDR reporters:
We have the right to protect ourselves by reviewing how the reporting is being done and how people’s information is being used or misused. […] Everyone has a right to provide us information or not but it’s not unethical to ask them to do so.
About the fact in October 2023, M. Sullivan wrote in emails to OCCRP reporters that he applied pressure on the editors of NDR about NDR’s story about OCCRP:
It would be unethical to do anything else. We recommended fact checking and high standards. What statement above is not good advice to a fellow editor? We have no idea why NDR made the decision they did.
About the fact in October 2023, Drew Sullivan wrote in emails to OCCRP reporters that the NDR reporters could be “Russian Assets”.
If you obtain private emails from within an organization, you should not complain about the contents. We have no obligation to prove anything to you from a private email. As professional journalists, we stand by what we publish. As you know, reporters pursue leads and obtain evidence that they don’t publish, for various reasons. We have not published the statements that you attribute to us and therefore do not see an imperative to justify these statements. We trust that you have sought to investigate the facts yourselves.
Ends