Research Resources on Restricting Kleptocracy

We provide a list of websites and tools to help undertake research on kleptocracy.

The resources listed below are drawn from the workshops we conducted with civil society and the media as part of the project ‘Restricting Kleptocracy: Strengthening Monitoring and Accountability in the First Mile’.

Please contact MariaSR@rusi.org if you come across any additional materials that you think may be useful to include here.

Investigations

Global Investigative Journalism Network

International Consortium for Investigative Journalism

OCCRP

OCCRP Investigative Dashboard
This is a global index of public records of companies, property and court documents
Search "Find online resources" >> Filter by country / region / document type

Aleph
This is a search engine aggregated information from a series of data bases. Information can be uploaded to check for connections in existing data bases. https://docs.alephdata.org/ provides guides and videos on how to use the platform.

Foreign Agents Registry
This is a database of lobbyists registered with the US government. It can be useful to check how politicians and governments use public money and for what purpose.

Webarchive
This historical digital library of websites has been created by the Internet Archive organisation. It can be used to look for older versions of websites of companies that may have removed information (since 1996).

WhoIS
This site allows you to find out who is behind a website, who registered it, in which country, etc.

Advanced Google search tutorial

Google Search Operators: Complete List - by Joshua Hardwick

Google Power Search – by Stephan Spencer

‘Follow the money’ tutorial - by Paul Radu, co-founder of OCCRP

Pipl
This allows to find people in different social media and data bases. Requires payment for access.

Similar services:
TruePeopleSearch
TruthFinder

Pacer
This allows you to search for cases in the United States. Access to case information costs 0.10 cents per page, with a minimum entry fee of $3. Here is a tutorial.

Recap
This is a collaborative project that seeks to put as many US court documents and cases online as possible.

Offshore Alert
This reports on offshore jurisdictions, sharing judicial information about companies, individuals, etc.