OCCRP declares ‘most corrupt person’ of the year

Manila: The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has declared president of Belarus Aleksandr G Lukashenko 2021’s person of the year in organized crime and corruption.

OCCRP is a non-profit media organization, consisting of investigative journalists that aims to exposes crime and corruption so the public can hold the powerful to account.

In an announcement, the OCCRP said the panel of six judges “had no trouble selecting the post-Soviet autocrat” from the pool of 1,167 nominees, making it the first time in a decade that the decision was unanimous.

“It was a banner year for corruption, but Lukashenko stood out from the crowd,” panel member and OCCRP cofounder Drew Sullivan said.

Lukashenko has been in power as president since 1994. In 2012, he said during a Reuters interview that he is the “last and only dictator in Europe.”

Finalists for the 2021 Corrupt Person of the Year

🇦🇫 Asraf Ghani
🇸🇾 Bashar Al-Assad
🇹🇷 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
🇦🇹 Sebastian Kurz

And the winner, 🇧🇾 Aleksandr Lukashenko.

See why our judges selected the Belarusian president. https://t.co/5dZxwMfOF4

— Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (@OCCRP) December 27, 2021

He has faced intense scrutiny at home and abroad, with the European Union slapping Belarus with sanctions. Still, his government continues to dismiss claims of abuse despite incidents where critics and their allies are arrested and convicted of trumped-up charges, including Syarhei Tsikhanouski, the husband of opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

On December 22, a court also sentenced four anti-government protesters to between 18 and 20 years in prison for terrorism and arms trafficking offenses, which critics said were part of Lukashenko’s crackdown on dissent.