OCCRP Launches New Search Engine for Investigative Journalists

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a non-profit network of investigative journalism centers in Europe and Eurasia, has launched a new data platform to enable journalists and researchers to sift more than 2 million documents and use the findings in their investigations.

People using the new data platform, called ID Search, will be able to set up email alerts notifying them when new results appear for their searches or for persons tracked on official watchlists. They can also create their own private watchlists.

Using the new tool, journalists and researchers will be able to access data including gazettes of commerce, company records, leaks, court cases and more. One of the most comprehensive open source lists of Politically Exposed Persons is also at users’ disposal. Starting today, most sources on ID Search will be updated every 24 hours.

Documents and databases are also cross-referenced with watchlists and international sanctions lists so that persons of interest involved in organized crime or corruption can be identified.

In the past few weeks, OCCRP has added documents from five additional offshore jurisdictions, reflecting growing public awareness of the shadowy structures that drive the criminal economy in the wake of the Panama Papers investigation.

The new tool is part of OCCRP's Investigative Dashboard (ID), a ground-breaking platform bringing together data search, visualizations and researcher expertise. It is currently used by more than 4,400 journalists including those from OCCRP's 24 partner centers.

Users can access the search engine at https://data.occrp.org.