Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, swindle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Rogi, and today we're

talking about the FinCEN files. These files include more than 2,600 leaked documents spanning

more than five years and including over 2,000 suspicious activity reports,

or SARS. These were provided to BuzzFeed and shared with 108 news organizations, over 400

individual reporters in 88 countries following a model that many will recognize from the Panama

papers. My guest is James Wright. James is the deputy editor-in-chief

for investigations at the very tenacious and effective organized crime and corruption reporting

project, the OCCRP, one of the organizations that collaborated in this project. Prior to joining

OCCRP, he held several positions with regional media and has won a series of awards for

his work. James, thank you for joining me. Nice to be here. Thank you, Alexandra. Before we get into

the substance of this story, which is extensive, can you describe how OCCRP came to be involved in this

investigation? I believed for the longest time that reporters were pretty cutthroat when

it came to scooping one another, but collaboration on big stories seems to be increasingly common.

It is, and actually, that's what OCCRP is all about. It's a network of almost 50 different

independent investigative centers now, a lot of them based in Europe, but also South America,

Africa, and pretty soon to be in the Asian subcontinent.

So we're expanding rapidly because this model is effective.

It does work.

When you put 400 people on something this complex and this far ranging, you're going to

get a much richer report than if you

just have the kind of team that most news organizations can field these days. Maybe the New York

Times might have 12 people to put on it, but if you've got 400, you're going to find out a lot more.

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