Thank you Grok for killing me off in 2021. This is a very specific hallucination (July 29???) but the rest of there report on OCCRP is equally bad. Garbage.

OCCRP was named the winner of the Maria Ressa Courage in Investigative Reporting Award by the University of Maryland. A great thank you to the inspirational staff and students there and especially to Jim Risen and Maria. We are honored!

Well, I hope this isn’t true or I’m really looking at a bad year.

WashPost cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit her job when her latest (and last) cartoon for the post was killed by editors. It showed tech billionaires and media owners including Bezos bending before Trump with offerings. If media does not stand up to power the U.S. risks becoming Hungary.

OCCRP’s Person of the Year for advancing crime and corruption: Bashar Al-Assad:

OCCRP lifetime corruption achievement winner: Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang:

For the first time in the history of OCCRP’s Person of the Year award, the judges have awarded a special “Lifetime Non-Achievement Award.” The prize goes to Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, one of the longest serving dictators in the world.

OCCRP has named former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as its 2024 person of the year. He led his country’s production and distribution of the highly addictive street drug Captagon, earning billions of dollars to operate prisons and maintain his brutal authoritarian rule.

Who will be OCCRPs Person of the Year? The person who did the most for crime and corruption?

Stay tuned…..

Georgia's State Security Service (SSG) claims a foreign-backed plot aims to disrupt Saturday's presidential elections with a "color revolution."

Opposition figures call it pro-Russian rhetoric designed to intimidate protesters critical of the ruling Georgian Dream party.

Azerbaijan’s government has intensified its crackdown on independent media, with a court sending six journalists from the independent outlet @MeydanTV to pre-trial detention for four months on disputable charges of currency smuggling.

They were detained early Friday.

However, when we started, OCCRP added clauses to our grant agreements guaranteeing donors could not interfere with our editorial product. This protection allows us to report on govt money in places in the world where donors don't work, people are too poor to give and biz models don't work.

For decades, our co-founders have chronicled dark networks of global crime and corruption. Now they’re sharing their insights of the latest trends.

Donate to secure a seat at an exclusive webinar with Drew Sullivan and Paul Radu on threats to democracy — and how we fight back: bit.ly/3ZvNlc7

To my anti-corruption colleagues: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” - MLK. Be happy you have a chance to prove yourself.

The businessman is Koka Kokolashvili, whose sister is married to the cousin of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s informal leader.

Kokolashvili was given the two companies contracted to develop the 25 hydropower plants by their founders, for free.

Is it just me or do others feel that any impression we had that Elon Musk or Peter Thiel were smart is LONG gone. They seem half morons and the more they talk they stronger the impression.