Passports Are Key to Uncovering Offshore Secrecy — We Use Machine Learning to Find Them Efficiently

Passports are often the missing link when investigating offshore companies' ownership in secret jurisdictions.

Journalists regularly use them to identify end clients of offshore service providers during investigative projects involving massive data leaks.

ICIJ and its media partners sifted through millions of documents to unearth the linkages between offshore companies, trusts, and people connected to them across dozens of countries.

ICIJ ’s data team tags documents that contain passports in Datashare , allowing them to be used by the reporting team immediately.

Only 14% of the images classified as passports are false positives.

The tool's model is only available to ICIJ staff, members, and partners for security and confidentiality reasons.