About Us
Anti-Corruption Action
Anti-Corruption Action is a Virginia 501(c)(3) investigative nonprofit. We find the enablers of authoritarian corruption and we drive consequences against the layer that keeps the corruption economy running.
Corruption is usually treated as a governance problem, measured in indices and answered with reports. We treat it as an attack surface. Money, brokers, agents, manufacturers, lobbyists, and lawyers build the legal scaffolding that authoritarianism, human rights abuse, and government capture depend on. Some of these enablers are billionaires operating with impunity. Most are functionaries operating in obscurity. Almost none of them are ever punished.
We work to change that with targeted transparency.
We believe in the power of transparency. Wielded smartly and purposefully, it is a potent tool for defending democracy and the rule of law. Facts carry weight, and anti-corruption laws and tools are powerful instruments for creating transparency about facts that can trigger action.
What We Do
We identify, research, and name the enablers using open-source intelligence and public records research. We document what they did, we explain how it harmed people, and then we put the evidence to work where it does the most damage to the system it supports.
We are an investigative journalism nonprofit, but our end goal is not to publish our findings. It is to trigger action with them. The usual theory of change for an investigative organization is to publish. We publish too, but publishing is a tactic, not the product. Our output is the enforcement referral, the prosecution brief, the supplier letter, and the named target. We turn evidence over to enforcement agencies, prosecutors, allied governments, corporate customers, and market participants. We measure ourselves by what the evidence did, not by whether it was read.
Much of that work is done quietly. Some of it is done anonymously, both to keep our researchers safe and because the legal and governmental processes we try to energize often require silence.
How We Work
We run a four-step method that we have now applied on three continents.
Map the dependency
Find what the system cannot do without.
Find the chokepoint
Identify where that dependency narrows to a handful of named firms.
Follow the money
Identify who manages the support network and who collects rent for doing so.
Build the impact strategy
Decide what to do with the evidence and who is best placed to act on it.
A sanctions-evading shipment, an unexplained transfer, and the purchase of a regulation all leave the same kind of trail in corporate registries, customs data, vessel tracking, campaign finance filings, and court records. We find that trail and convert it into action.
Our Programs
The Dekleptocracy Project
Our Ukraine program works to cut off the material and financial flows that keep Russia’s war running. Researchers in the United States and Ukraine cover the Russian commercial economy, illicit finance, shadow-fleet oil smuggling, and defense industrial production. Our 2026 study, Vulnerabilities in the Russian Chemical Industry, names the producers, intermediaries, and trading firms behind the catalysts and additives Russia cannot make for itself. Since publication it has contributed to multiple European Union sanctions designations and to several independent investigative reporting projects.
Visit dekleptocracy.orgThe Quid Pro Quo Tracker
A public database that follows money from the donor to the political action committee to the candidate and on to the votes, regulations, federal contracts, and lobbying engagements that follow. Existing money-in-politics transparency can tell you who gave. It cannot tell you what the money bought. The Tracker lets an ordinary citizen connect a contribution to a vote, a rule, and a contract, with every link a public record.
Visit purchasingpolicy.orgWhat Makes Our Approach Different
We target the enabler layer
Presidents get prosecuted and oligarchs get sanctioned, but the people who make it possible walk free. Enablers are also the weak point. Oligarchs spend fortunes obscuring their identities. Enablers have reputations, licenses, customers, and bank accounts in jurisdictions that enforce the law.
We are researchers, not commentators
Our team includes a former senior official of the State and Defense Departments and specialists in anti-money-laundering, sanctions, and supply-chain analysis. We know what an enforcement referral has to contain because we have written and received them.
We build tools for civil society
The Quid Pro Quo Tracker is free to use and exposes its data through a public API. Our research methodology is published as a playbook others can use.
We are multinational
A research team split between the United States and Ukraine gives us language, sources, and urgency that a Washington-only organization cannot match.
Board of Directors
Kristofer Harrison
President
Kristofer Harrison is a co-founder and president of Anti-Corruption Action. He was a senior official at the Departments of State and Defense under President George W. Bush, where he worked on Russia policy, and he is a co-founder of the economic research firm China Beige Book. He has spent much of the last decade doing financial research and transparency work alongside Russian and Eastern European anti-corruption activists, and he writes on corruption and authoritarian finance for outlets including Foreign Policy.
Edward Baumgartner
Director
Edward Baumgartner co-founded a boutique due diligence and communications consultancy more than 15 years ago in London. Previously, he was a partner in a London-based public relations and investor relations firm. He began his career in television and print journalism and has a focus on the former Soviet Union, where he has worked extensively for more than 25 years.
Scott Williams
Director
Scott Williams is a start-up leader, attorney, and former technology and digital media executive at AT&T, CNN, and Time. Scott has been active in the anti-corruption space for nearly a decade, working with investigative journalists, transparency organizations, nonprofits, and enforcement agencies to fight corruption and support the rule of law around the world.
We do not accept government money. Independent funding is what lets us name names.
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