TI International Workshop in Berlin

The Dirty Money Transparency International - Russia team took part in an international workshop on OSINT in Berlin. Our colleagues Vladislav Netyaev and Kristine Bagdasaryan, together with partners from the network, discussed how in practice they find connections in investigations - between companies, assets and people.

For our team, OSINT is not an additional tool, but a necessity. In Russian conditions, access to information is consistently limited: registers are closed, data disappears, official sources become less reliable. Working with open sources remains one of the few ways to find and verify information.

At the same time, a significant part of the data has not gone anywhere - it is still in the public domain, but scattered. This could be registries in other countries, website archives, old media publications, social networks, or technical data such as domains. The task is to put it all together into one picture.

The workshop discussed signs that often indicate a problem: mass registration addresses, nominee directors, transactions with disproportionate value, repeated connections between the same people and companies.

Specific cases were also analyzed. In one of them, equipment was purchased at a price of tens of millions, although its real cost was hundreds of times lower. Such schemes are used to withdraw funds under the guise of regular transactions.

Separately, they said that search results can vary greatly - depending on the language, region and settings. Therefore, checking information always requires several approaches, rather than just one request.

International meetings provide an opportunity to compare practices and approaches. Working conditions vary from country to country, but the principles remain the same – and this exchange helps you move faster and more accurately.