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Graham Barrow has worked to prevent money laundering and fraud for decades — in recent years working with journalists to investigate companies. In a guest post he shares his tips with Tony Jarne on what you can do when you are following the money.

Many times, as journalists, we need to investigate businesses to tell our stories. You need to track companies to know how Russia is avoiding the sanctions and who allegedly profited from PPE contracts during the pandemic.

But, how do we begin, and what are the details we need to look out for? To navigate the company’s world, Graham gives some advice when you are tracking the money.

Start with Companies House

Companies House is where all the businesses based in the UK need to be registered. It is fully transparent, open, and free. Check the basics of a company: who are the directors? Does the company have real activity? A website? If a company does not have a website, it is a red flag.

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*Pinpoint creates a ranking of people, organisations, and locations with the number of times they are mentioned on your uploaded documents.*

MA Data Journalism student Tony Jarne spent eight months investigating exempt accommodation, collecting hundreds of documents, audio and video recordings along the way. To manage all this information, he turned to Google’s free tool Pinpoint. In a special guest post for OJB, he explains how it should be an essential part of any journalist’s toolkit.

The use of exempt accommodation — a type of housing for vulnerable people — has rocketed in recent years.

At the end of December, a select committee was set up in Parliament to look into the issue. The select committee opened a deadline, and anyone who wished to do so could submit written evidence.

Organisations, local authorities and citizens submitted more than 125 pieces of written evidence to be taken into account by the committee. Some are only one page — others are 25 pages long.

In addition to the written evidence, I had various reports, news articles, Land Registry titles an company accounts downloaded from Companies House.

I needed a tool to organise all the documentation. I needed Pinpoint.

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