Censored Documentary Exposes How The U.S. Government Launders Propaganda As 'Independent Journalism'.

A Leaked Censored German Documentary Exposes How USAID Uses OCCRP To Advance U.S. Foreign Policy.

In December of last year, the German public broadcaster NDR launched an investigation into the U.S. government-funded investigative outlet Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in coordination with Mediapart, Drop Site News, and an Italian and Greek outlet.

While elements of the investigation were published by Drop Site News and other outlets, the NDR investigation was censored after, “US journalist Drew Sullivan, the co-founder and head of the OCCRP, placed pressure on the NDR management and made false accusations against the broadcaster’s journalists involved in the project.”

But the investigation has now been leaked, and it offers new details into how the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) functions as a cutout of the U.S. government’s USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development).

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project is an influential -ostensibly independent- investigative outlet that publishes stories about corruption, mostly in official U.S. government enemy countries.

As Mediapart noted, “The global OCCRP network brings together 70 media outlets and has taken part in some of the most far-reaching cooperative international investigations into corruption and tax evasion, including Panama Papers and Cyprus Confidential.”

As Drop Site News noted, “Despite its obscure name, the collaborative journalistic institution has reshaped global affairs with its investigations of enormous tranches of leaked documents: OCCRP did the Russia-focused reporting from the Panama Papers and played a key role in the Pandora Papers, the Suisse Secrets, the Russian Laundromat, and China Tobacco. All were game-changing exposés, all targeted largely at U.S. adversaries. Its collaborative approach has led to partnerships with more than 50 of the globe’s most influential media outlets: the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The (London) Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and so on.”

But the censored NDR investigation revealed that OCCRP is funded and controlled by the U.S. government through USAID.

The investigation uncovered that OCCRP has a “cooperative agreement” with USAID, which means that USAID has to approve top officials at OCCRP.

Shannon McGuire, as a USAID official, said in the documentary, “There is a substantial involvement clause in a cooperative agreement, so specifically for this cooperative agreement with OCCRP, it’s things like reviewing and approving an annual workplan, there is key personnel, if OCCRP needs to change key personnel, for example, the chief of party, which is Drew Sullivan, then they submit a request with a resume, and we review it and say, ‘okay, we approve your nominee for a new chief of party’”.

McGuire admits, “We are also aware and mindful about how uncomfortable the relationship (between USAID and OCCRP) can be”.

Mike Henning, another USAID official, said, “Some of the strings that are attached on a cooperative agreement are approval of key personnel, approval of an annual work plan, and approval of sub-grants above a certain amount” adding, “Key personnel would be at play, who’s the editor-in-chief, or who’s the CEO, who’s the managing editor…. Also, an annual workplan, ‘this is what we’re going to do this year and here’s how we are going to do it’, the agency would have an ability to question that”.

As Pro Publica journalist Steve Engelberg noted in the documentary, “I think at the point in which a funder has influence over the personnel who do the news, that is a very powerful lever, because we all know in journalism that a lot of what happens depends on who does it, who is the editor, who is the reporter, who is the leader, the preferences of that person is going to shape the coverage. So I think if you are worried about pleasing a funder, particularly a governmental funder, which has clear viewpoints on things, to me that would be a bit problematic.”

Leila Bilacic, from the Centre For Investigative Reporting, noted in the documentary, “If you are funded by the US Government, there are certain topics you would simply not go after because the US government has its interests which are above all the others”.

Drew Sullivan, the founder and publisher of OCCRP, admits in the documentary that the U.S. government, “Is the largest donor to OCCRP, and has been for most of our history” and “The policy that we have is that we don’t report on a country with their own money, so any government money we get, we don’t report on it… I think the U.S. government doesn’t allow you to”.

One of the NDR journalists notes that, “If you look at the Foreign Assistance Act it says several times in there that the funds should be used to advance American foreign policy,” and USAID official Mike Henning responds saying that, “The work of OCCRP is in harmony with the U.S foreign policy at the broadest level” because “the work of independent journalists is an important part of promoting democracy”, and Drew Sullivan responds saying, “It does advance American foreign policy when you have good investigative journalism around the world”.

But in reality, USAID’s funding of “independent journalism” around the world in effect means funding media outlets and NGOs that advance U.S. foreign policy and regime change efforts.

For some examples,

• USAID funded the Nicaraguan outlet “100% Noticias,” which pushed for the violent ousting of the country’s president and longtime U.S. enemy, Daniel Ortega and openly “urged anti-Sandinista forces to storm the presidential residence, kill the president, die by the hundreds doing so, and hang his body in public”.

• USAID also funded groups like “New Citizen,” which played a role in organizing protests in Ukraine in 2014, culminating in a U.S.-backed coup against the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych and a U.S. puppet government being installed.

• Similarly USAID funded media outlets in Ukraine opposed the implementation of the Minsk accords in 2019, the peace deal that would have ended the U.S./Russia proxy war in Eastern Ukraine.

• Along with this, USAID-funded media outlets pushed for getting Romanian presidential candidate Calin Georgescu kicked off the ballot for his opposition to the Ukraine proxy war.

Similarly, USAID funds OCCRP because it advances negative stories about official U.S. enemies while ignoring negative stories about the U.S. and its allies.

Some of the stories published by OCCRP against official enemy countries of the U.S. are not even accurate.

The OCCRP has published multiple investigations pushing Bill Browder’s fabricated story about Sergei Magnitsky.

For context, Bill Browder was an American billionaire working in Russia, who claimed that Sergei Magnitsky was his lawyer who uncovered Russian government corruption, blew the whistle in court about it, and was killed by the Russian government in response.

But the German outlet Der Spiegel, along with the dissident Russian journalist Andrei Nekrasov, exposed the story as a complete fraud, finding that Sergei Magnitsky was actually Browder’s accountant, not a lawyer; he never made any allegation about Russian government corruption, he went to jail over tax fraud, and he died in prison due to medical neglect, that exists across the prison system in Russia, and not in a targeted murder.

Just as it did in official enemy countries, USAID funds media outlets domestically in an attempt to focus stories towards official enemies and away from the U.S. and allies.

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