The topic of OCCRP has reached our parliament debate sessions now.
But what is this OCCRP which is accused of being heavily endorsed by our congress ecosystem and their friendly media journalists?
So you know We have often seen our opposition congress leaders like Rahul Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh and Priyanka Chaturvedi and their durbari media like Rajdeep Sardesai and Arfa Khannum Sherwani use the unsubstantiated and wild reports by OCCRP to sensationalise their own agendas.
Let us start at the beginning. OCCRP stands for organised crime and corruption reporting project which is a non-profit investigative journalism organisation. Except, it is just a facade. Underneath it has a devious regime change game at play.
Well a new report by French publication “mediapart” has revealed sarajevo-based OCCRP’s dubious funding network from US govt as well as from organisations linked to George soros.
So OCCRP has been significantly funded by the US government, receiving at least $47 million since its inception, with the US providing about half of its budget annually, despite claims of independence.
Apart from this, George soros org – open society foundation is one of the donors of the OCCRP. Yes its our same not-so-friendly billionaire businessman soros who pledged to bring regime change and destabilise the indian democracy.
One could have dismissed this as conspiracy theories if there were not so many coincidences regarding people associated with OCCRP writing hit jobs against Indian corporates or PM Modi or India and the opposition leaders using these reports as a leverage to not let the parliament proceedings to continue. You see. From 2004 to 2014 the country’s economy had been so bad that we were amongst the most fragile economies. Dr Manmohan Singh, to keep his allies happy made sure we were stuck in policy paralysis marred by the scams such as coal-gate, the 2g spectrum scam, and so on and so forth.
On the other hand, the people of India gave a resounding mandate for third consecutive term to Narendra Modi. In last one decade, India’s economy has taken off on such a trajectory that we are one of world’s fastest growing economy overtaking far developed countries such as the UK – yes, the ones which once colonised India.
Those who do not want India to prosper are naturally not too happy with the way things have turned out. So, they will cling onto straws if it would help Modi fail. And Congress surely wants it more than anyone else. So OCCRP reports come at a very opportune time for Congress leaders to create a ruckus in Parliament so that the policy paralysis state of governance returns.
Here is how they are doing it.
First comes the pegasus case – in 2021, it was the OCCRP’s report which alleged that a software by Israel’s NSO group was being used to target and snoop on individuals by state agencies in various countries. The report which was investigated by over 17 media organisations contained names of individuals that were being targeted. Following these allegations, congress started pointless issue of Government-endorsed snooping. And interestingly, further “mahaul” was created by our durbari media journalists – Arfa khannum sherwani and rajdeep sardesai’s better half and TMC MP Sagarika Ghose.
And guess what, a year later in August 2022, a Supreme Court picked panel found no evidence of spyware on the 29 phones it got for probe.
Many politicians and journalists who cried hoarse that they were being snooped upon did not even bother to submit their phones for investigation. Clearly, it was done to just stall the Parliament proceedings.
2nd comes the favourite rhetoric of our opposition – which is target Adani
After the release of Hindenburg report, OCCRP published unsubstantiated reports to support similar organisations that have been known to discredit enterprises and profit through short-selling shares, once this profit-racket was revealed by SEBI, the OCCRP almost immediately began targeting other entities and interests. These same reports were used by the likes of people like Jairam Ramesh and Priyanka Chaturvedi to cause a logjam in the parliament.
What is distressing to note here is that the inclusion of Indian names in OCCRP’s investigations, has been damaging to economic activity and investor confidence in the region. Also The motivated revelations stemming from the OCCRP’s investigations into the Panama Papers and Pandora Papers were another instance of this group’s activities.
It does not come as a surprise that whenever the new session of Parliament is about to start, a new report is released on Adani from one of the other publication which accuses the Indian corporate of irregularities. Interestingly, none of these allegations have been proven yet.
3rd we come to the misleading narrative around Indian vaccines
So it was on July 1st 2021 that the OCCRP published a report stating that Brazil had decided to cancel a significant $324 million contract for the Indian vaccine Covaxin due to allegations of irregularities and corruption in the deal.
Following this on july 2nd the congress ecosystem picked up this narrative and congress leader Shashi tharoor tweeted about the same.
And just like clockwork congress ecosystem targeting indian vaccines over OCCRP report was joined in by their friendly alleged journalists like Rajdeep Sardesai who also latched on to the revelations.
Another interesting thing to note here is that issues raised by OCCRP first are further propagated by our leader of opposition Rahul Gandhi during his visits abroad. Just look here how OCCRP has been promoting and tagging Rahul Gandhi in their tweets
And there are other connections of Rahul Gandhi with OCCRP – for instance – Salil shetty, the VP global at OSF, which is a major funding agencies for OCCRP was seen walking alongside Rahul Gandhi during his bharat jodo yatra.
Next we have Anand Mangnale, associated with OCCRP· is alleged to have channelled funds from Chinese sources to Sharjeel Imam for involvement in the Delhi riots. And mind you that Mangale has ties with · Congress party, notably through fundraising activities, and was part of the Delhi Protests Strategy Group (DPSG), which is suggested to have played a role in planning the riots.
