Image Credit: Pete Kiehart for The Washington Post via Getty Images 
The European Commission transferred more than €600,000 of taxpayer money to the controversial Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) immediately after the 2024 European elections.
The payment — exposed by Berliner Zeitung following a parliamentary inquiry by AfD MEP Petr Bystron — went to the very media consortium whose partner outlets ran aggressive smear campaigns against conservative and EU-skeptical politicians during the election. For critics, this was not support for “investigative journalism,” but rather a payoff for political services rendered.
Trump Defunds, Brussels Bankrolls
While Brussels is now funding OCCRP, President Donald Trump had already cut off its lifeline. After his 2024 reelection, Trump defunded OCCRP from USAID, recognizing the network as a political weapon.
OCCRP’s Co-Founder Admits Regime-Change Role
The network’s true mission was laid bare by its co-founder Drew Sullivan. In a German public broadcaster NDR documentary — later censored under pressure — Sullivan admitted OCCRP had helped topple governments in five to six countries. This was not neutral journalism, but open political interference.
Driving Trump’s Impeachment With CIA and USAID
OCCRP was also central to the first impeachment of President Trump in 2019. Investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger documented how OCCRP reporting was cited four times in the CIA whistleblower complaint that triggered impeachment. The so-called whistleblower was himself a CIA analyst.
Meanwhile, USAID and the U.S. State Department oversaw OCCRP’s operations, approving its annual work plans and even key personnel hires. In other words, OCCRP was a government cut-out — a contractor dressed up as “independent journalism.”
Manipulating the 2024 EU Elections
The same playbook was applied in Europe. Ahead of the 2024 European elections, OCCRP media outlet — including Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and Czech partner Deník N — launched a coordinated smear campaign. They branded critics of the Ukraine war as “Moscow’s agents” for giving interviews to Voice of Europe, a Prague-based opposition news outlet.
Targets included former Czech President Václav Klaus, former Foreign Minister Cyril Svoboda, and AfD MEP candidate Petr Bystron.
Bystron was hit hardest: 23 police raids on his homes, offices, and even friends’ properties — all triggered by OCCRP “reporting.” After more than a year, authorities have produced no evidence, no charges, no indictments. Yet the political damage was irreversible.
“For those who don’t know what the OCCRP is, this is a network of the biggest media houses in Europe… For decades, they were paid secretly by USAID, and now it has come out that they were also paid by the European Union right after the elections for the European Parliament,” Bystron told Border Hawk.
“Just imagine, those newspapers, who did the biggest smear campaigns against EU critics — they influenced the election heavily — they got paid 600,000 euros right after the election.”
From U.S. Proxy to Brussels’ Power Tool
OCCRP’s record is clear: funded by Washington, weaponized against Trump, deployed against European opposition, and now bankrolled by Brussels. With U.S. support gone, the EU Commission has stepped in—transforming OCCRP into a propaganda arm for the EU establishment.
Brussels calls it “investigative journalism.” In reality, it is political warfare funded with taxpayer money.
