1 of 43

Data World Tour

GIJC 2025

2 of 43

Data World Tour

NarcoFiles: The New Criminal Order

By Ignacia Velasco

3 of 43

NarcoFiles Highlights

​

  • A landmark LatAm investigation: 40+ media outlets in 23+ countries, all based on a massive leak from Colombia's Prosecutor's Office�
  • Crime as a system, not isolated cases: investigating OC as a global network of logistics, business innovation, dark money, and corruption.�
  • Redrawing the cocaine map: cultivation is spreading north to Central America, while processing labs are jumping the Atlantic to Europe.�
  • Context over stigma: reporting on a global system, not just a national stereotype.�

4 of 43

Behind the Scenes: NarcoFiles Major Challenges

  1. Surviving the 5TB data flood�
  2. Navigating the information ocean (without overwhelming the crew)�
  3. Anchoring the story in facts

​

5 of 43

Solution

Aleph:

  • Safe environment for investigations�
  • Wide search capacity�
  • Entity mapping and cross reference �
  • And more!

​

6 of 43

Behind the Scenes: Major Challenges

  1. Surviving the 5TB data flood�
  2. Navigating the information ocean (without overwhelming the crew)�
  3. Anchoring the story in facts

7 of 43

Solution

  • Tech is not all�
  • Eat, sleep and breath the leak�
  • Context matters�
  • Choose your team players wisely (and hold their hands all the process)�
  • Make sure you show partners work

�

​

8 of 43

Behind the Scenes: Major Challenges

  1. Surviving the 5TB data flood�
  2. Navigating the information ocean (without overwhelming the crew)�
  3. Anchoring the story in facts

9 of 43

Solution

  • FOIA’S (anticipated)�
  • Research tools (Marine Traffic, Panjiva and Import Genius are good sources to trace seized drugs ) �
  • Court documents �
  • Reporting, reporting, reporting!

10 of 43

Top secret, very valuable global data sources

  • A list of people, legal entities, and companies on sanctions lists, sourced from the OpenSanctions Project and formatted as an Aleph dataset�
  • Collection created by OCCRP researchers of public data sources that are the most useful for investigative reporting.�
  • A guide to investigative companies, assets, government contracts, and legal judgments in Latin America�
  • Type a name and open a whole universe of Colombian court records

11 of 43

Data World Tour

MARA Inc - Malaysia Government UK & Australia Property Fraud

By Khairil Yusof

​

12 of 43

Investigation Highlights

  • 2012-2015
    • Opaque Government owned private companies, off book and offshore subsidiaries
    • Ministry of Rural Development purchasing properties overseas in UK and Australia
    • Investigating UK properties, but also uncovering key players, but could not find the price differential or funds transfers
    • Meanwhile Sydney Morning Herald and Fairfax Media uncovered the deals for over inflated prices through court proceedings for the properties in Australia
  • 2018
    • Malaysian government commissioned EY to conduct audit of Mara Inc purchases, detailed audit report draft leaked by Sydney Morning Herald
  • 2022
    • Charges brought against key figures for corruption in Malaysia
  • 2024
    • Parliamentary enquiry
    • Corruption charges dropped (without acquittal) - only 2 money laundering charges for one person
  • To date all only one Malaysian individual charged, not a single person has faced jail time

Crossborder UK and Australia property fraud purchases by Malaysian politicians and senior government officials from Rural Development Ministry and Agencies.

  • Use of private companies owned by Malaysian government to commit fraud
  • Foreign and offshore companies (BVI) subsidiaries to facilitate fraudulent purchases and fund transfers, precursor to 1MDB methods, but at smaller scale
  • Complicated cross-border transactions and relationships

Impact�Regional and international collaboration between civil society, journalists and UN agencies for anti-corruption investigative reporting

  • Editorial guidelines for reporting and shared open data of politically exposed persons
  • Beneficial ownership legislation, standards for data, data visualisation and guidance for journalists

​

13 of 43

Behind the Scenes: Major Challenges

  1. Malaysian Private Government Companies don’t publicly publish financial statements and are not audited. Names can be fraudulent.

2. How to identify and connect numerous persons of interest

3. Difficult to identify and visualize complicated beneficial ownership structures

14 of 43

Behind the Scenes: Major Challenges

  1. Malaysian Private Government Companies don’t publicly publish financial statements and are not audited

2. How to identify and connect numerous persons of interest

3. Difficult to identify and visualize complicated beneficial ownership structures

15 of 43

Solution

Look through national, state and agency financial statements. To identify these companies, and fiscal exposure.

Names can be fraudulent, for example, the company can be reported as Thrushcross Ltd or just Thrushcross in reports, but actually Thrushcross (BVI) Ltd. Both can exist, and used interchangeably.

Search for these names in global registers, open corporates and ICIJ databases.

16 of 43

Behind the Scenes: Major Challenges

  1. Malaysian Private Government Companies don’t publicly publish financial statements and are not audited

2. How to identify and connect numerous persons of interest

3. Difficult to identify and visualize complicated beneficial ownership structures

17 of 43

How to make sense of this?

18 of 43

Solution

Use FATF Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) definition and relationships to identify, categorise your database of people to investigate.

  • Foreign PEPs:
  • Domestic PEPs:
  • International organisation PEPs
  • Family members
  • Close associates�

Example guide for Thailand & Malaysia

Keep adding to and building this dataset for your investigation.

19 of 43

Behind the Scenes: Major Challenges

  1. Malaysian Private Government Companies don’t publicly publish financial statements and are not audited

2. How to identify and connect numerous persons of interest

3. Difficult to identify and visualize complicated beneficial ownership structures

​

20 of 43

Which one is the hidden ultimate beneficial owner that hasn’t been charged?

21 of 43

Solution

Use FATF and Open Ownership Data Standards to identify and visualize complicated structures of beneficial ownership or discovering ultimate beneficial ownership

Refer to local regulations and regulatory guidelines for definitions of control and ultimate beneficial ownership.

For Malaysia, private government companies, the ultimate beneficial owners will be high level Ministers.

MARA Statutory Body Enactment

Minister of Rural Development

22 of 43

Top secret, very valuable global data sources

National / Agency Financial Statements

Laws and Gazettes for Statutory Bodies

https://opencorporates.com/registers

https://www.opensanctions.org/datasets/peps/

​

More extensive local open PEPs datasets for Southeast Asia will be available March 2026 for Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

For Southeast Asia, can reach out to Journalists Against Corruption network through pcij@pcij.org to access anti-corruption / crime related local documents and data.

This data already exists in your day to day reporting and past investigations. You can extract it, connect them and write new stories.

​

23 of 43

Data World Tour

The Kenyatta Family's Offshore Wealth and Secrecy

​

By Purity Mukami

24 of 43

Investigation Highlights

  • “Too rich to steal”
  • Use of a BVI company owned through 2 Panamanian foundations, to own an apartment in UK.
  • The tenant of the apartment, A labour party MP was shocked to know who owns the apartment.
  • The family refused to disclose if they had declared their wealth owned through the offshore companies and if they were evading any taxes.

25 of 43

Impact

  • The public reaction was one of significant anger and cynicism
  • The Political undertones changed significantly
  • The institutional mechanisms and political will required to translate that evidence into concrete legal penalties against the powerful Kenyatta family were absent.
  • New law that repealed the older Public Officer Ethics Act (2003)
    • Criminalizes refusal to file one’s assets
    • Gives EACC significant oversight role

26 of 43

Behind the Scenes: Major Challenges

  1. Getting a name in a massive leak or getting a tip off from a source is not enough

2. Understanding the regulations and laws which could be misused

3. Does the data point matter? Wealth declaration documents and property ownership information is not publicly available in Kenya

27 of 43

Solution

  • Mapping relationships as seen in different documents
  • Understanding the timeline of events
  • Understand relevance of the data point to the local context

28 of 43

Behind the Scenes: Major Challenges

  1. Getting a name in a leak or getting a tip off is not enough

2. Understanding the regulations and laws which could be misused

3. Does the data point matter? Wealth declaration documents and property ownership information is not publicly available in Kenya

29 of 43

Solution

30 of 43

Behind the Scenes: Major Challenges

  1. Getting a name in a leak or getting a tip off is not enough

2. Understanding the regulations and laws which could be misused

3. Does the data point matter? Wealth declaration documents and property ownership information is not publicly available in Kenya

31 of 43

Solution

We found that a lot of the offshore companies appeared in publicly available property ownership databases elsewhere in the world

  • UK
  • France
  • US

AND

  • The publicly available data was quite big
  • Creating an account on the websites can be geocoded

32 of 43

Solution

-Joined hands with Data Teams from

  • Finance Uncovered
  • BBC
  • Guardian

Different teams contributed different level of skill set.

  • Used Excel, SQL, to match the leaked and publicly available datasets.

33 of 43

Top secret, very valuable global data sources

​

​

There are many Philipines, Bangladesh, China, India, Brazil Citizens among others who own companies registries in Nigeria BO register, EITI BO registries etc

​

34 of 43

Data World Tour

Know their names: Gaza coverage

By Mohammed Haddad

35 of 43

Know their names

Highlights

Telling the story of a dead person is never easy, so how do you tell the stories of tens of thousands of people?

Know their names seeks to go beyond the numbers, providing names and faces to the thousands of people killed in Israeli attacks over the past two years.

We are documenting history.

  • Men, women and children
  • Children
  • Entire families
  • Occupied West Bank
  • Journalists
  • Medics

36 of 43

Behind the Scenes: Major Challenges

  1. Data gathering during times of war

2. Telling the human story: “We are not numbers”

3. Are you ok? Journalists are human too

​

37 of 43

Solution

  • Understand, and then explain the limitations�
  • Learn to compartmentalise�
  • Run a daily tracker�
  • Be transparent with your data sources�
  • Contextualise

​

​

38 of 43

Behind the Scenes: Major Challenges

  1. Data gathering during times of war

2. Telling the human story: “We are not numbers”

3. Are you ok? Journalists are human too

​

​

39 of 43

Solution

  • Always people first�
  • No “perfect victims”�
  • Humanise - A face and a name�
  • Tell the story of the story�
  • Native digital content

​

​

​

40 of 43

Behind the Scenes: Major Challenges

  1. Data gathering during times of war

2. Telling the human story: “We are not numbers”

3. Are you ok? Journalists are human too

​

​

41 of 43

Solution

  • Collaboration is key�
  • Give a voice�
  • Ask: Are you ok?�
  • Documenting history

​

​

​

42 of 43

Top secret, very valuable global data sources

We are not numbers campaign

Shireen Observatory - daily updates

Shireen.ps

Telegram channels - daily updates

https://t.me/s/MOHMediaGaza

https://t.me/s/mediagovps

UN OCHA - weekly updates

https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-338-gaza-strip

​

43 of 43

Thank you!