This is a mantra that we hear very often and this is why we are writing about this today.
Public domain information means, data and information that can be obtained through publicly available sources. Databases that anyone can suscribe to, media sources, blogs, forums, any resource that you can access by just paying or that is free to access somehow. Some resources are expensive, but accessing those is just a matter of money, which makes them publicly available.
Finding a media article with useful information about the subject should also be easy just by googling the name of the subject. However, the key to find useful information is to know what to search, and in most cases just googling someone or a company does not provide the desired results.
Despite the analyst intuition and knowledge is critical for the search process, technology is a great resource to find items faster and to dig deeper in to web. In this case most consultations conducted by non expert users will not find what they look for.
Other databases like compliance databases are expensive and requiring to refine searches and some knowledge about sanctions and AML regulations.
Investment databases like Pitbook, or Crunchbase also require knowledge of the analyst to know where to fish in a sea of data.
The history of a Russian oligarch
A few years ago, EU police seized a several hundred million yatch from a Russian oligarch.
The investigation went on over the years, but his financial network was so sophisticated that no-one could prove he was hiding Putin´s assets at a global scale.
An analyst researching the case at a prestigious university in the UK paid attention to a litigation taking place in the UK that had apparently nothing to do with the Russian oligarch in question. After a few searches he realized the litigation had to do with a wealthy individual originally from Russia, who was also British by naturalisation. This individual was connected to the wife of the a well known oligarch in Switzerland.
Pulling the string from tis ligation, and only through connecting companies and individuals he discovered one of the largest financial networks ever discovered, resulting in the seizure of billions of US$ across the globe. This network was discovered due to the knowledge of the analyst to guess what the scheme looked like but only by connecting the dots on public records.
This is a just an example of how public records are key to know about a target company, a subject, and most footprints and red flags are usually discovered through public re cords digging. A different thing is to be able to interpretate findings, which is critical to understand what public domain information means to your deal.
Knowing where to search
Many of the databases we work with, are publicly available, but not known for the general public. For example do you know where to find company fillings in Curacao, or in Gran Cayman? Are they publicly available? Yes they are, but it´s not a straight forward process and you need to know where to dig and search.
Training analysts
We train analysts to get world-class skills to find whatever they need to find. We mainly work with intelligence firms, departments and law firms that require enhanced skills to search and find what they need to know. Our training includes what can be obtained and where, and how to get information in countries that have limited publicly available information.