Providing Immediate Visibility into Illicit Networks

European organised crime networks rely on sprawling corporate structures integrated with global systems of commerce and finance to conduct illicit activities and launder the proceeds. While the legitimate economy creates opportunities for these networks, it also makes them discoverable in public data. Sayari has enabled investigators and analysts to use such data to identify otherwise hidden criminal networks and activity.

Providing Network Context to Analysts and Investigators

Sayari delivers instant access to authoritative global corporate and trade data, empowering agencies to expose complex transnational networks and drive evidence-based investigations with clear provenance for every detail.

Covering companies and key individuals in virtually every country and market (including high-risk regions), Sayari’s solutions enable law enforcement officers to map hidden networks, expose complex relationships, and conduct investigations supported by source documentation and provenance for every finding. Because all information is drawn from unclassified sources, it can facilitate inter-agency and cross-jurisdictional collaboration required to effectively disrupt these complex criminal networks.

Sayari uses several methods to directly address the core challenges involved in combating transnational organised crime:

Mapping Illicit Networks: Sayari enables investigators to profile targets, map supply chains, and investigate trafficking logistics networks using the largest commercially available collection of corporate and trade data. Sayari’s coverage includes high-risk jurisdictions, where traditional data providers have limited access. In-app translation capabilities improve efficiency when investigators encounter content outside their native language.

Tracing Financial Flows: Sayari provides deep visibility into complex corporate structures and relationships, helping to identify high-risk parties and suspicious activity patterns that may indicate money laundering. To counter the rise of anonymous financial transactions, Sayari’s extensive dataset of public records can be combined with blockchain analytics to support investigations into crypto-related fraud and money laundering.

Proactively Identifying Key Actors: Sayari’s combined trade and corporate data enables investigators to generate leads based on high-risk patterns in trade activity and corporate structure. From a single lead, investigators can map broader networks of trading partners and control parties.

Sayari is trusted by European law enforcement, including the Metropolitan Police and German BKA, to support their most challenging missions with its global dataset and intuitive investigative tools.

Case Example: Lifting the Veil on Balkan Transnational Organised Crime

Sayari data supports reporting on the growing role Balkan Transnational Criminal Organisations (TCOs) play in activities ranging from narcotics and human trafficking to weapons smuggling and cybercrime. These groups have shifted from rigid hierarchies to agile transnational networks built on trust. As a result, investigations to disrupt and dismantle Balkan TCOs increasingly require operational and strategic coordination between law enforcement agencies from multiple jurisdictions.

Balkan TCOs often conduct illicit activities such as drug trafficking and money laundering through legitimate business structures and global trading activity, leaving a paper trail in the form of public and commercially available data. Public records are reliable, authoritative, and more easily shared than classified or sensitive sources, which is often critical for investigations involving multi-jurisdictional law enforcement coordination.

In 2024, Spanish and Ecuadorian authorities arrested 31 suspects targeting one such network, which allegedly imported multi-tonne quantities of cocaine into Europe, often concealed in shipments of fruit. Data available through Sayari revealed additional companies and potential co-conspirators or facilitators through shared control of businesses across jurisdictions in which the network operated. Read more about this investigation here.

Innovating in Partnership with Regulators and Law Enforcement

Sayari maintains open dialogue with agencies in Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia, and Japan in order to better support their missions and address the challenges they face in the field.

The company also relies on a team of advisors for insight into emerging threats. On 30 October, it welcomed Adrian Searle, a distinguished and internationally respected leader in law enforcement and economic crime, to its advisory board. Adrian was formerly the Director of the National Economic Crime Centre (NECC) and the UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU), where he was responsible for leading the UK’s operational response to fraud and wider economic crime. During Searle’s time leading a multi-agency unit within the National Crime Agency (NCA), he initiated the launch of a new data fusion initiative with seven UK banks and coordinated the NCA’s largest ever operation against global illicit finance.

Adrian Searle’s appointment to the advisory board underscores Sayari’s commitment to providing data-driven solutions, built on its highly differentiated foundational data layer, that empower investigators worldwide to effectively target, understand, and dismantle sophisticated illicit networks.

Click here to learn more about Sayari or visit their stand at Milipol Paris 2025: Hall 5A / Stand G59