Financial Investigations – Online (AM)

Whatever your beat – from politics or conflict, to sport, fashion or travel – pursuing impactful investigations requires journalists to examine the actions of private companies. Despite a world of corporate PR spin and complex financial structures that often work to obscure what’s actually going on, there are a wealth of tools and techniques to help investigators.

Knowing what you can find, where to look for it and how to make sense of it, both for yourself and for your readers, will allow you to explore and understand financial details so you can draw conclusions and drive your projects forward.

This training provides tools for deep financial research and guides participants through investigations that lead to offshore accounts in secrecy jurisdictions.

Technical Requirements

This course will need you to have the following software/apps/tools on your computer:

Zoom app
Camera and audio

This course will be hosted on Zoom. To find out more about how we use Zoom, please check out our Zoom InfoSec page.

Course Structure

Exercises and additional resources will be provided to supplement the training between sessions.

Important

Our training is not recorded: if you miss a session, it is lost – you cannot watch a recording of it, nor will you be allowed to attend that session at a later date.

26 November 2024 – Company Accounts

10:00–13:30

This session will teach you how to find information on Companies House, how to use its search tools to find meaningful data and how to interpret the information you come across. It will also provide guidance on the limitations and insufficiencies of the registry.

27 November 2024 – Financial Open-Source Intelligence

10:00–13:30

Open-Source Intelligence (frequently referred to as OSINT) has become crucial to many investigators’ ability to cross-examine allegations and reports of serious financial crimes. These practical sessions will take you through real-life cases to teach you the core techniques to conduct deep-dive investigations to uncover opaque global company structures used to facilitate money laundering, corruption, bribery, tax fraud schemes, and more.

28 November 2024 – Follow-the-Money Case Studies

10:00–14:00

These sessions will guide you through a real life investigation into dodgy dealings, offshore scams and shell companies. Each case study will provide you with copies of actual documents that the investigators used to identify points of interest and unearth the next piece of information or set of documents. The final session also includes an additional 30 mins Q&A with all the trainers for participants to clarify points from the whole course or ask for more specific advice.

Diogo Augusto

Diogo Augusto comes from a background in Sociology, having worked as a lecturer and researcher for 10 years in universities in Portugal and Belize. As a sociologist he specialised in cultural and political issues.

Dylan Kennedy

Dylan Kennedy has over two decades of expertise in the United Kingdom’s leading international Law Enforcement Agencies, Global Correspondent Banking Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Investigations, and Global Express Courier Logistics sectors.

Stefania Spezzati

Stefania Spezzati is an award-winning reporter covering European banking at Reuters. Based in London, she chronicles all things finance, breaks news and digs deep into the world's biggest banks. Prior to joining Reuters, Stefania spent about a decade at Bloomberg News.

Leigh Baldwin

Leigh Baldwin is the editor of the non-profit investigative journalism organisation SourceMaterial. He was previously a corruption investigator for Global Witness and a reporter for Bloomberg News.

26 November 2024 10.00–13.30 Timezone: GMT (UK Time)
27 November 2024 10.00–13.30 Timezone: GMT (UK Time)
28 November 2024 10.00–14.00 Timezone: GMT (UK Time)

Timezone: GMT (UK Time)

Location: Zoom meeting

Upcoming:

28–30 January 2025