OCCRP names Belarus president as most corrupt person of the year

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.

The runner ups for the award included Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani, Syria's dictator Bashar Al-Assad, Turkey president Recip Tayyip Erdogan and Australian chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

The co-founder of OCCRP, Drew Sullivan said, “It was a banner year for corruption, but Lukashenko stood out from the crowd.”

“Ghani certainly deserves an award, too. He was breathtaking in both his corruption and his gross incompetence. He deserted his people, leaving them to misery and death so he could live among the corrupt former state officials in the moral cesspool that is the UAE,” he added.

The winner for 2021 was selected “unanimously” by a panel of six journalists in recognition of all they have done to advance organized criminal activity and corruption. According to the statement by OCCRP, the judges “had no trouble selecting the post-Soviet autocrat, despite a record field of 1,167 nominees.”

The Belarusian president was chosen for the title because of four major crimes, as reported by OCCRP.

• Channeling state money to a series of oligarchs close to the Lukashenko family

• Intercepting a Ryanair passenger plane carrying a Belarusian dissident and forcing it to land in Minsk, in violation of international laws on aviation

• Manufacturing a border crisis with the European Union by luring thousands of refugees to the borders of the bloc

• Promulgating misinformation and fake cures for Covid

Another judge on the panel Louise Shelley said, “by playing politics with vulnerable people whom he lured to Belarus under false pretenses, Lukashenko had broken new ground in cynicism and cruelty.”

Lukashenko is the last dictator in Europe. He has remained in power since 1993 and is accused of rigging elections and torturing protestors and critics.

The winner of the award in 2020 was president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, who had narrowly beat former U.S president Donald Trump and Turkish president Recep Erdogan for the title.

Other previous winners include Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.