About Us
Anti-Corruption Action
Anti-Corruption Action is a Virginia 501(c)(3) nonprofit that researches the bankers, lawyers, lobbyists and companies that enable corruption, and puts that evidence in front of governments, prosecutors, journalists and the public.
Corruption is usually treated as a governance problem, measured in indices and answered with reports. We look instead at the people who make it work. Financiers, brokers, agents, manufacturers, lobbyists and lawyers build the legal structures that authoritarian governments, human rights abusers and captured agencies depend on. A few of these enablers are billionaires. Most are professionals working out of public view. Very few are ever punished.
We use transparency to change that. Anti-corruption laws and public records let us establish facts, and when those facts reach the people with the authority to act, they lead to sanctions, prosecutions and policy changes.
What We Do
We identify and research enablers using open-source intelligence and public records. We document what they did and how it harmed people, and we give the evidence to the institutions best placed to act on it.
We publish our research. But our main goal is action on it. Most of our work ends in an enforcement referral, a prosecution brief or a letter to a supplier. We provide evidence to enforcement agencies, prosecutors, allied governments, corporate customers and market participants, and we judge our work by the actions that follow.
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 use a four-step method, which we have 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.
Sanctions-evading shipments, unexplained transfers and money spent to influence regulations leave records in corporate registries, customs data, vessel tracking, campaign finance filings and court records. We use those records to build cases that others can act on.
Our Programs
The Dekleptocracy Project
Our Ukraine program, focused entirely on Ukraine, works to cut off the material and financial flows that keep Russia’s war running. Our research helped shut down Arctic LNG 2, Vladimir Putin’s massive liquefied natural gas plant in the Russian Arctic. It has also informed the European Union and the U.S. government on multiple sanctions packages. 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 (QPQ) Tracker
Our program for transparency on money in politics. The QPQ Tracker is a free 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 that come after. Most money-in-politics databases show who gave. The QPQ Tracker lets citizens see what decisions followed, with every link to a public record.
Visit purchasingpolicy.orgU.S. corruption investigation
A major investigation into corruption in the United States. The evidence we are assembling may support prosecutions in foreign jurisdictions.
What Makes Our Approach Different
We focus on enablers
Heads of state are sometimes prosecuted. Oligarchs are sanctioned. But the people who help them usually face no consequences. Enablers are also easier to hold to account. Oligarchs spend heavily to hide their identities. Enablers have reputations, licenses, customers and bank accounts in jurisdictions that enforce the law.
Our team has government and investigative experience
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 (QPQ) 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 work in the United States and Ukraine
Our researchers are based in both countries, which gives us language skills and sources that a team working only from Washington would not have.
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. Our funding comes from private donors, which keeps our research independent.
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