Week in OSINT #2020-19

Week in OSINT #2020-19

companies business intel corporate intelligence
Welcome to a new week, and a new newsletter, this time with a guest blogger aa special topic!

It's been a long time since I had the pleasure of a guest blogger, but the awesome MWOsint was willing to take over this week. In this episode he'll be sharing some of his favourite links that deal with corporate intelligence, so grab your coffee and over to you Matthias!

This week’s topic is company research, especially in the European Union. The following links will help you get started, lead you to primary sources such as the official company registers in individual countries, and also provide some additional sources that might become relevant during your investigations.

  • OpenCorporates
  • OpenGazettes
  • E-Justice
  • UK Companies House
  • Northdata
  • Patentscope
  • Crunchbase
  • ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database
  • OCCRP Aleph

OpenCorporates

Every company research should start in OpenCorporates. This database has over 180 million companies and over 230 million company officers from all over the world listed. Ideal to get a quick overview, it often also links to the original source such as a national company register or official public notices on the company.

Link: https://opencorporates.com/

OpenGazettes

OpenGazettes scrapes some of Europes public notices, also known as gazettes. You can find changes in directorship here, as well as company relocations or information on bankruptcies. It even incorporates public notices from the Cayman Islands! As with OpenCorporates, this database will link the original source. After all, nothing beats primary sources when it comes to investigations.

Link: http://opengazettes.com/

E-Justice

Are you looking to gain access to that primary source? The European Union’s E-Justice portal contains a nice overview of national registers throughout its member countries. Company (business) registers, land registers and in some cases also insolvency registers are listed here, with a neat description of what the individual register contains and how you can access it (some only have a paid access). To top it off, this site also has an interconnected European business register, that allows you to query multiple countries at once.

As you can see, the United Kingdom is still listed. Unfortunately they chose to leave the EU, so they won’t be listed for long.

Link: https://e-justice.europa.eu/

UK Companies House

Luckily the UK has one of the best company registers worldwide. This free database gives you access to original filings such as annual financial reports, as well as information on the directors of a company. As everything is interconnected in this dataset, you can easily pivot from a company or person to other entities they are linked to. Often I have found original documents here, that were actually from subsidiaries of British companies that were registered in countries in which you don’t have easy or free access to company registers.

Link: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/

Northdata

As I’m German, I of course had to add a German site in this Week in OSINT. Northdata scrapes the German (paid) company register and public notices and give access to a unique free database for researching German companies. Next to annual financials, it also displays a nice timeline of company activities and creates link charts for the involved individuals and companies.

Link: https://www.northdata.de/

Patentscope

Patents, registered trademarks and design will often tell you a lot about companies and who they’re linked to as well. The World Intellectual Property Organization offers a great database to search for content in patents worldwide. You’ll surely find many European companies have registered patents, so a deep dive into this database might help you find new information on your intelligence target. And by the way: I happened to post a blog article on this database not too long ago:

Link: https://keyfindings.blog/2020/05/03/using-the-wipo-ip-portal-for-osint/

Crunchbase

Crunchbase monitors tech companies and startups. While the tool itself is actually paid, you can still find some useful information in the free data Crunchbase offers. So, if you are looking for a startup, try querying it in Crunchbase to see some details on funding rounds, investors and the overall equity raised by the company.

Link: https://www.crunchbase.com/

ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database

Not all information on your intelligence target can be found in official databases. Sometimes you might be tracking a target that sets up shell or offshore companies. Not every offshore company is directly linked to tax fraud (evasion) or money laundering, but the data collected by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) might help uncover some illicit activities. The Offshore Leaks Database offers a broad variety of search possibilities and also displays results in a link chart (I’m a sucker for good visualizations of data!).

Link: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/

OCCRP Aleph

Similar data can also be found in the Organized Crime & Corruption Reporting Project’s Aleph database. Like the Offshore Leaks Database, it contains information on companies from data leaks. Furthermore, it also scraped data from official company registers. All in all, this is site might provide further leads for your company research.

Link: https://aleph.occrp.org/

Those were just a few of the sources I use, when I dig into companies. These search options on each site above mainly revolve around organizations and firms, rather than individuals. For this, there are many other tools and techniques, from diving into LinkedIn to using Hunter to find corporate emails. But I guess this is the topic for another Week in OSINT.

Have a good week and have a good search!

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