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Browse a searchable database of individuals, companies, and laundering schemes including PEPs, shell companies, crypto laundering, and more.
Across the globe, illicit financial flows drain public resources, destabilize economies, and empower authoritarian regimes. The Anti-Money Laundering Network (AML Network) stands at the frontline of this fight, offering a growing repository of well-documented, critically analyzed cases of financial misconduct through our Watchdog Database.
This multi-layered database shines a spotlight on the five most common and most abused pathways of global financial crime:
Each of these categories reflects how corruption metastasizes across jurisdictions and sectors — from elite state actors moving dirty money offshore to anonymous firms buying up city blocks in secret. This landing page explains our framework, the data we track, and the systemic threats each category poses to anti-corruption, democracy, and economic justice.
At the heart of most money laundering schemes lies influence. Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) — heads of state, cabinet ministers, generals, judges, and royal family members — often enjoy a unique combination of access to public funds and freedom from oversight. Their positions grant them not only significant power but also opportunities to exploit systemic gaps, allowing illicit wealth accumulation at scales that ordinary criminals can hardly approach.
Our PEPs database documents these actors not only for who they are, but how they abuse their position. It exposes:
PEPs represent the greatest AML risk for financial institutions globally. By documenting their activities with precision and scrutiny, the AML Network supports due diligence teams, journalists, and regulators alike in combating the tide of corruption and illicit finance.
Examples from our PEPs database include:
We follow leaks, public records, NGO investigations, and court cases, cross-referencing them with financial trails that expose the machinery of elite theft. This database underscores a truth often denied: Money laundering is a political crime. Beyond individual wrongdoing, it erodes trust in democratic institutions and distorts global markets. As such, understanding the web of connections surrounding PEPs is crucial in designing effective AML policies and strengthening governance frameworks worldwide.
In pushing this agenda, our database is a vital tool not only for tracing illicit flows but for fostering transparency and accountability at the highest levels of power. By enabling institutions to identify and manage risks more effectively, it also helps curb the detrimental economic and social impacts that arise when corruption flourishes unchecked. The fight against financial crime, therefore, begins with shining a light on those who wield influence behind the scenes.
Shell companies are anonymous by design. In theory, they can serve legitimate purposes — in practice, they often act as financial disguises for those seeking to hide, layer, or shift illicit funds. Their legal opacity makes them invaluable tools in the arsenal of money launderers, enabling the concealment of true ownership and obscuring the trail of corrupt proceeds.
Our Shell Companies Database uncovers:
These entities are often embedded in broader laundering ecosystems — particularly in corrupt procurement chains, state capture operations, and cross-border capital flight. What makes shell companies so dangerous is their legal opacity. Beneficial ownership laws vary, enforcement is lax, and in some jurisdictions, authorities do not even collect ownership data.
Our entries often expose:
Each shell company profile details jurisdiction, directors, linked owners, and most importantly, how it fits into a laundering pipeline. By mapping these hidden corporate structures, the database empowers financial institutions, investigators, and regulators to pierce layers of secrecy and trace illicit financial flows. It reveals patterns of abuse in global financial systems, shedding light on the facilitation of corruption, tax evasion, and organized crime. Leveraging advanced analytics and cross-jurisdictional data, the database is crucial for due diligence and risk management strategies that aim to dismantle the shadow networks enabling illicit wealth to thrive unchecked.
Corporate laundering is the white-collar cousin of shell structuring — but more powerful, more systemic, and often more brazen. This method uses legitimate companies — both state-owned and private — to move, layer, or disguise illegal money. Unlike isolated shell entities, corporate laundering permeates entire business networks, masking illicit flows within seemingly lawful operations.
Our Corporate Laundering Database tracks companies that:
This category is crucial for understanding how illicit finance blends into the formal economy. Many of these firms operate in construction, mining, infrastructure, and energy — sectors where opaque contracts and political patronage often intersect.
Real-world red flags include:
By mapping ownership, offshore ties, and suspicious transactions, we reveal how corporate veils protect kleptocrats and criminal enterprises alike. Our database also highlights the evolving tactics these companies use to circumvent regulatory scrutiny, such as complex inter-jurisdictional arrangements and the use of third-party intermediaries. This enables financial institutions, investigators, and policymakers to identify systemic risks and craft targeted interventions that disrupt these illicit networks without impeding legitimate commerce. Ultimately, understanding corporate laundering illuminates the hidden intersections between economic power, political influence, and criminality.
Real estate has become the global asset of choice for money launderers. It’s stable, illiquid, and often exempt from scrutiny — especially in regions like the Gulf, London, and New York, where beneficial ownership transparency remains weak. The high-value nature of property investments allows illicit funds to be integrated into the formal economy with relative ease, making real estate a prime vehicle for laundering proceeds of crime.
Our Real Estate Laundering Database documents:
We take a property-focused approach. Each case profile features:
Whether it’s apartments in Dubai owned by Russian oligarchs, luxury homes in London bought by Central Asian dictators, or real estate in the U.S. linked to Chinese officials, our database shows how laundering flows from politics to property. We are particularly focused on jurisdictions with real estate loopholes, including:
The database also tracks emerging laundering schemes, such as bulk purchases of condos by anonymous offshore vehicles, use of luxury developments to mask illicit capital influx, and exploitation of residency or citizenship-by-investment programs. By uncovering these complex networks, we provide critical insights for regulators, real estate agents, bankers, and law enforcement seeking to disrupt the flow of dirty money and enforce greater transparency and accountability in global property markets. In doing so, the database helps expose not just isolated transactions, but the structural vulnerabilities that allow illicit money to embed itself within the global luxury real estate sector.
The crypto revolution brought innovation — and with it, a new frontier for laundering money. From dark web transactions to DeFi mixers, cryptocurrency offers pseudo-anonymity, global reach, and rapid convertibility, all attractive features for criminal networks. Laundering tactics have evolved to include meme coins, chain hopping between blockchains, and the use of smart contracts to layer illicit funds further.
Our Cryptocurrency Laundering Database highlights:
We focus on tracing laundering through:
Each case includes:
Notably, threat actors employ “chain hopping,” rapidly switching funds across multiple blockchains and currencies to obfuscate trails, and meme coins have emerged as novel laundering conduits due to low regulation. Mixers and tumblers remain crucial, as they jumble transactions to break traceability. The database also tracks evolving tactics such as the exploitation of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and use of privacy-focused cryptocurrencies like Monero and Zcash, which significantly challenge enforcement efforts. Overall, it reveals how crypto laundering has become deeply integrated into the global financial crime ecosystem, affecting markets from ransomware to state-level sanctions evasion.
The AML Network’s Watchdog Database is not a passive archive. It is designed to inform investigations, support whistleblowers, and drive enforcement action. We provide:
Our rigorous data collection methodology combines expert analysis, legal documentation, leaked intelligence, and open-source research to ensure accuracy and reliability. Each entry undergoes multi-layered verification by specialists dedicated to maintaining the highest standards of information integrity. This commitment underscores our role as a trusted resource for regulators, financial institutions, media, and civil society globally.
In an era where global finance shields the corrupt, our work aims to tear through the fog — making laundering visible, traceable, and ultimately punishable. By empowering stakeholders with actionable intelligence, we enhance accountability and contribute meaningfully to dismantling illicit financial networks worldwide.
