Maria Giuditta Borselli

Follow the Trail: Crypto Sanctions Evasion

The core message of the provided transcript is that crypto sanctions-evasion investigations become more effective and safer when blockchain analysis is integrated with broader publicly and commercially available information. C4ADS framed its value proposition around detecting, disrupting, and defeating illicit and malign networks through analysts, large-scale data access, and investigative software. The speakers explained that their work is not limited to what can be found freely online: their definition of publicly available information includes commercially available datasets, such as import-export records, and treats crypto data as only partially public but still relevant to a wider investigative data environment. TaHiTI Borselli introduced C4ADS as a Washington-based nonprofit and described a three-pronged model: multilingual analysts familiar with operating environments, access to large datasets, and software to make those datasets usable. Horizons, the organization’s data lake, was presented as containing over 3,000,000,000 rows of data from property, corporate, and procurement registries across more than 176 jurisdictions. The broader investigative data universe discussed included corporate and trade records, property and asset data, satellite imagery and sensing, air and maritime tracking data, and phone and social media records. The speakers emphasized that illicit actors eventually leave digital traces when they interact with systems such as website registrations, companies, assets, or other infrastructure. The session then explained how C4ADS uses Horizons to run investigations while reducing digital risk. The platform was created after analysts faced risks investigating Russian malign influence operations and Eurasian organized-crime assets in Dubai, including the danger of navigating monitored websites controlled by illicit actors. By scraping and archiving relevant information into a searchable data lake, Horizons lets analysts search quickly, preserve information even if it is later removed from the internet, and discover links in jurisdictions they may not have expected. The speakers contrasted bottom-up investigations, which start with a person or company of interest and map relationships, with top-down investigations, which filter large datasets to generate seed lists, such as companies exporting methamphetamine precursor chemicals to the Netherlands. C4ADS also described how it operationalizes findings through partners rather than enforcement or journalism itself. The Dubai Unlocked collaboration was highlighted as a public example: C4ADS obtained and developed access to Dubai property registry data and found criminal organizations, sanctioned individuals, and other illicit or malign actors parking assets in Dubai, then shared the information with journalists. Abby Schneiderhan then began a deeper explanation of publicly available information, clarifying that it can include paid databases but not email accounts, bank accounts, classified material, or secondary sources that synthesize information. The provided transcript ends as she is setting up a Horizons demonstration and crypto-related case studies.