Dataharvest 2024 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

Modern data search techniques online can reveal who controls companies, who finances them, and those who don't want anyone to know. Who earns the money is often the first and most important question? Who owns a business? Who's responsible for crimes committed by a dodgy business operation? Who signs off sanction-breaching deals? Who avoids paying taxes with the opaque company structures that cost the taxpayer gazillions? Well, who...? These are often the central questions for journalists and financial crime investigators of our times. Sometimes the answers are obvious; sometimes, they aren't. And that's often intentional. Money launderers, corrupt posliticians and business people like playing in secret. What we can do as online forensic investigators? We use the open, deep, dark web, un-indexed online registries and data from social media profiles. You need some method amid the madness. This presentation offers you a checklist approach for researching a company.