This guide is dedicated to the investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was murdered near her home in Malta on the 16th of October 2017, following a series of stories she did around the Panama Papers. Daphne fought tirelessly against corruption, and her contributions will be sorely missed.
We’d like to take this as opportunity to send our thoughts to the Caruana Galizia family, and assert our support for investigative journalists around the world.
When the Panama Papers leaked in 2015, one of the many things they shed light on was the importance of investigative journalists working to uncover the complex ways power runs through our society.
OpenCorporates relies on the data we make available being converted into information by investigative journalists, researchers and analysts. While ensuring company data is easily accessible is a large enough task, the people who weave together narratives from that data are just as vital to our mission of fighting corruption and organised crime.
This guide is a living handbook, providing resources and inspiration to help investigators use OpenCorporates to explore the corporate world. Although intended for investigators, we hope all API users will find it to be helpful.
If there’s anything we’ve missed, or you’d like to access our data for an investigation we’d love to hear from you!
- Useful Blogs
- Case Studies
- API Use Cases
- Investigations and Reports
- Other Resources
Useful Blogs
- Video: corporates investigations masterclass by Graham Barrow of The Dark Money Files Podcast
- Introducing OpenCorporates Advanced Search – more powerful than ever before
- 11 resources that will help you map a corporate network
- Can the UK’s beneficial ownership data be used to investigate corruption & money laundering?
- Interesting things you’ll find comparing gazettes across Europe and beyond
- Now there’s a better way to search officers on OpenCorporates
- At last: corporate events for everyone
Case Studies
The latest blog posts about how organisations have used OpenCorporates’ data to power investigations or due diligence can often be found on our Case Studies page.
- How open company data helps Global Witness investigate corruption
- Quantifind powers financial crime investigations using OpenCorporates’ data
- Exiger’s DDIQ automates due diligence verification using OpenCorporates’ data – helping identify risk at scale
- 6 Degree Intelligence cuts investigation time down to a fraction using OpenCorporates’ data
API Use Cases
- Explaining how our API was used for an investigation into corruption in the Jade industry, Myanmar – Sam Leon [Global Witness]
- Follow the Money with Python – Justin Seitz [AutomatingOSINT]
- Using the OpenCorporates API to Map Corporates Networks – Tony Hirst [Data Driven Journalism]
- Joining the dots: From property deals at the Trump Ocean Club Panama to Latin American drug cartels, how we’re using new technology to expose corrupt networks – Sam Leon [Global Witness]
- How we did it: investigating Nigerian football agents Paul Bradshaw [IQ4News]
Investigations and Reports
- Copycat websites, newly minted companies, double dippers cashed in on PPP loans [Miami Herald & Anti-Corruption Data Collective]
- Los negocios secretos de Novartis en paraísos fiscales [OjoPùblico]
- Нардеп: Саакашвили вывезли на самолете, принадлежащем оффшорной компании Порошенка [Pravada]
- Mission impossible: those seeking can not find Italian trustees in San Vittore (Switzerland) [Il Sole 24 Ore]
- Who Owns Birmingham? [Data Unlocked]
- Bitcoin is the name of the game for a new generation of firms [The Times]
- Digging Into Mandatory Disclosure Data: Highlights from ONE’s data dive with DataKind UK [ONE campaign and DataKind]
- Ivanka and the Fugitive from Panama [Reuters Investigates]
- Narco-a-lago: Money Laundering at the Trump Ocean Club Panama [Global Witness]
- The Panama Papers: the names [The Times & The Sunday Times]
- A Billion-Dollar Bank Fraud in Moldova, and 20,000 Opaque British Corporations [Naked Capitalism]
- Consultants take billions from foreign aid budget [The Times]
- Follow the Money: Who Extracts the Value of Nigerian Footballers? [IQ4S News -2016 CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Award Winner]
- Spanish Industry Minister Steps Down Over Panama Papers Revelations [New York Times]
- UK chancellor’s sober image belies a swashbuckling past [Financial Times]
- Reports talk of second Panama company tied to president [Beunos Aires Herald]
- Panama Papers: The Difference with Nigeria [Punch Nigeria]
- Revealed: Myanmar’s jade trade is run by former junta members [Wired]
- How super PAC donors hide behind shady LLCs [Sunlight Foundation]
- Fifty shades of tax avoidance, or, what are the bankers doing with our schools and hospitals? [OpenDemocracy]
- Thousands of Subsidiaries Go Missing From Bank SEC Filings [Bloomberg BNA]
- Panama Papers: Companies have been buying up flats in Glasgow’s plush west end [Glasgow Evening Times]
- Perfect Hindsight: on Breder Suasso of NZ and elsewhere, Global Transaction Services, of Hong Kong, Georgia (US) and London, mBank and Pekao Bank SA of Poland, and Ceska Sporitelna AS of the Czech Republic [Naked Capitalism]
- GT Group’s Protean Ian Taylor in the UK: Reuters’ Special Report on 43 Bedford Street, and More [Naked Capitalism]
- Jade: Myanmar’s Big State Secret [Global Witness]
- Deutsche Bank and a $10Bn Money Laundering Nightmare: More Context Than You Can Shake a Stick at [Naked Capitalism]
- Uncovering the Truth Using comprehensive data analysis – foreign investment in London property market [Thompson Reuters Labs]
- Data visualisations chart Tesco’s corporate network and registered addresses [The Guardian]
Other Resources
- An Idiot’s Guide to Money Laundering [Global Witness]
- Deploying data mining in cross-border investigative journalism [Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project]
- Story Based Inquiry: a manual for investigative journalists [UNESCO]
- Freedom of Information: an investigative guide for UK journalists [Matt Burgess]
- FOIA without the Lawyer: Freedom, information and the press [Montague Amin]
Photo by Ilya Ilyukhin via unsplash
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