Lukašenka named 2021 Person of the Year in Organized Crime and Corruption by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)

December 27. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) awarded the title of “2021 Corrupt Official of the Year” to Aliaksandr Lukašenka, according to the organization’s website.

A panel of six journalists and experts unanimously chose Lukašenka for “advancing organized criminal activity and corruption” from a record field of 1,166 nominees selected by readers, journalists, and editors of OCCRP and its partner organizations. Runners up for the annual award in 2021 included former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and former Austrian Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

“It was a banner year for corruption, but Lukašenka stood out from the crowd,” commented Drew Sullivan, the jury panel coordinator and OCCRP co-founder.

It is noted that over the past year, Lukašenka “channelled state money to a series of oligarchs close to his family; intercepted a Ryanair passenger plane carrying a Belarusian dissident and forcing it to land in Minsk, in violation of international laws on aviation; manufactured a border crisis with the European Union by luring thousands of refugees to the borders of the bloc; promulgated misinformation and fake cures for Covid.”

Another judge on the panel, Louise Shelley from George Mason University (USA), noted that Lukašenka “had broken new ground in cynicism and cruelty.” In particular, he “used the criminal and corrupt networks of the Belarusian state to foster a mass migration, leading to desperation, violence and endless cruelty.”

OCCRP is a community of media and individual reporters engaged in investigative journalism in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Latin America and Africa. The project was founded in 2007 in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and specializes in investigations of organized crime and corruption.

The bulk of its funding comes from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The project is also funded by the UN Democracy Fund and Open Society Foundations.