1. Financial crime can be uncovered
It was impressive and inspiring to see how much courageous and intrepid newsrooms from around the world are able to unearth. I heard from journalists who had traced the assets of hundreds of officials and associates of Venezuela’s Maduro regime to Florida, proved how Ukrainian raw materials extracted from Russian-occupied territories are sold to Turkey, and connected rare earths from mines in Northern Myanmar to North American electronic vehicle production.
Global datasets and open source techniques — alongside a whole lot of determination — makes this possible, and it is often the newsrooms with the least resources, such as those from South America, Africa, or Central Asia, that have the most inspiring results to show.
Where doors are closing, others may be opening elsewhere. Just look at UBO data — while the EU has curtailed access to ultimate beneficial ownership data via its (so-called) transparency registry, the Cayman Islands have somewhat opened up access.
This is just one small example of something I was not aware of before attending the conference — reminding me that there are always more data sources out there than you think.
2. Combination is key
Having said that, what also became apparent is that there is hardly ever a single data source that provides a foundation strong enough to carry an investigation. Corporate registries, data from fitness apps and social media, customs data, satellite images, vessel and flight tracking data – these are just some of the sources that investigators use and combine to investigate financial crime.
This makes it even more important to carefully store your data, employ entity resolution when combining data from different sources, and maintain a clear data model.
3. Customs data is fun to work with
Several of the most impressive investigations I saw presented at the GIJC conference in Kuala Lumpur were based on or related to customs data. In Russia in particular — but also across the Americas — customs data is available, either directly or via data vendors that provide access (something you may not be aware of when based in Germany, for instance, where customs data seems to be treated like a state secret).
This data is obviously relevant for investigating sanctions evasion and export control violations, as well as for conducting asset tracing and investigating general money laundering (customs data can be a good way to detect inflated product values).
Several sessions at #GIJC25 taught journalists about navigating the often murky world of corporate datasets — and how to map those connections
4. Russia lost control
Russia took measures to obscure company ownership following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent surge in Western sanctions against it.
The Russian state and the companies it owns are under increasing strain due to the war it continues to wage against Ukraine. While this is obvious, one particular consequence is that a huge grey market of data leaks from tax records, public databases and the inner workings of state-owned companies has emerged on the Telegram messenger app.
While this data is off-limits to any open-source vendor providing detailed, transparent data lineage, it is not only a trove of stories for journalists but could also be of interest to anyone seeking to fight sanctions evasion and financial crime more broadly in the Russia context.
5. Journalism does not know its worth
Adverse media is a multi-billion industry feeding into KYC and AML products that banks use to investigate counter-party risk. AI is increasingly used to crawl media sites and open-source providers (tell us about it!) to scavenge, in seconds, information on potential financial crime, hard-won and published by journalists in often months-long, tedious investigations.
I didn't hear this discussed during the conference chatter between journalists and organisations that are increasingly struggling to finance themselves in the private sector (while in several countries, public broadcasters are under assault by right-wing populists, and worse).
But perhaps it’s not up to journalists to discuss this, but for the global compliance data industry to acknowledge the pivotal role journalism plays in uncovering financial crime.
