OCCRP Celebrates 15 Years 🎉

Dear OCCRP Reader:

We recently celebrated our 15-year anniversary with a raucous beach party. It was a rare moment to let loose with trusted colleagues and commemorate everything we have built together. It was also a chance to introduce our expanded North America, Middle East, Africa, and Pacific Island teams. When you do the kind of intense work we do with employees scattered across six continents, these moments are infrequent. In fact, many people met in person for the first time at the party — it was an evening that few of us will forget.

As OCCRP’s co-founders, we’re still amazed at how much the organization — and the field of collaborative investigative journalism — has grown and evolved over the years. After our first cross-border project together in 2005, we immediately saw the advantage of sharing resources, skills, and information. We registered the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in 2007 for our first grant proposal and OCCRP became the tool we needed to reveal injustices and hold power to account; we hit the ground running, kept the name, and never looked back. (You can read more about our history here.)

An early OCCRP training with Paul Radu, far left.

Today, legacy media are beefing up their international investigative teams, including hiring “collaborative investigations editors,” and joining forces with journalists outside of their organizations. As one of the pioneers of cross-border collaborative investigative journalism, it is extremely satisfying to see more and more media outlets who understand the larger benefit and the impact that can be achieved when working together.

It is estimated there are only about 3,000 full-time investigative reporters around the world, which means OCCRP employs and works with about a tenth of that number. But we need more investigative reporters shining a light on crime and corruption.

That is why our one-of-a-kind model also involves training reporters, data editors, and researchers — and using every resource we have to build an open, cooperative ecosystem where investigative journalists can work together to publish the stories that are driving change around the world. It is not an exaggeration to say that no other organization is doing what we’re doing in the way we are doing it.

OCCRP trained journalists from our member center Kloop in Kyrgyzstan.

You may have noticed over the years that some of our editors like Central Europe Editor Pavla Holcová and Ukraine Editor Anna Babinets are also editors in chief of their own independent outlets. We don’t just partner with them on stories. They are OCCRP member centers and we support them financially so they can focus on investigations. We invest in them as people and in their organizations, providing important services like digital and physical security training, pro bono legal support, and fundraising assistance so their outlets can thrive.

As we toast this 15-year milestone, we also want to take this opportunity to thank you for being a devoted reader. We always say our member centers are the heart of our organization, but our readers are the engine. Without you, our work goes nowhere.

We’re especially grateful to members of our OCCRP Accomplice program. “Accomplice” might sound like an odd name to use for financial supporters, but in many of the places where we work, independent journalism is either a crime or close to becoming one. Earlier this year, OCCRP was declared an “undesirable organization” in Russia, just like our member center IStories, making it impossible to operate in the country. So our supporters are Accomplices in the “crime” of independent investigative reporting.

Crime and corruption are everywhere. But so are we. This isn’t just a job for us — it’s a lifelong calling. And we’ll never give up or stop working until we realize our vision of a world where lives, livelihoods, and democracy are not threatened by crime and corruption.

Thank you for taking this ride with us — we can’t wait to see what the next 15 years bring.

Gratefully,

Drew Sullivan & Paul Radu

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P.S. Did you know? We launched OCCRP Aleph, our investigative data platform, in 2012 and it now contains 3+ billion records. Aleph has been adopted by dozens of media and is fast becoming an industry standard that helps journalists follow the money, letting them search, investigate, and visualize data. Journalists and researchers can apply here for free access.