JLS/2007/ISEC/431

30-CE-0220887/00-41

Prevention of money-laundering and

fiscal fraud: the BRACCO project

David Mitzman, InfoCamere, IT

ECRF 2010 - Budapest, Hungary
14 June, 2010

contents
the BRACCO project
the BRACCO software system:
what it does and how
the next steps

Intro to BRACCO
BRACCO is a 2-year project, from December 2008
to December 2010
It is co-financed by the EC Directorate General
Justice, Liberty and Security
Partners: InfoCamere and Metaware (left the
project in April)

Objectives of the project

The project contributes to the fight against
fiscal crime by developing a search &
investigation system to collect, aggregate,
process, analyse and visualise information
extracted from different public sources.
Such investigation is normally highly labour- and
knowledge-intensive, requiring making sense out
of a deluge of data.

Why should BRs get involved?

AML is not (necessarily*) a Business Register
service, but it is an important area of
collaboration between administrations.

* - some Registers are interested in monitoring

their territories and all are interested in
supporting thorough due diligence procedures.

the service context or market

The data sources include public registers such
as the Business Register, the Insolvency and
defaulters databases, yearly accounts statements,
as well as newspaper articles.
Customer databases can also be integrated to
provide additional relations for custom-tailored
applications (Fiscal Police, Tax Authority, Stock
Exchange Authority, Local Business Regulation
Agencies)

the service context or market

A first (simple) product of this type is
being used by the Fiscal Police and
was introduced in 2009 to all the
Italian Chambers of Commerce (BRs).
In 2010 it will be released as part of
the standard Business Register
access system.

the DeVisu navigator

A first (simple) product of this type is
being used by the Fiscal Police and
was introduced in 2009 into the
Chamber of Commerce system.
In 2010 it will be released as part of
the standard Business Register
access system.

Techniques in fiscal crime

detection and prevention
Integrate and aggregate different data sources
NLP for analysis of free-text information such as
newspaper articles
Data Visualisation social networks
Data Analytics - analyse networks for special
features, to detect patterns or series of events
Notify relevant authorities of events

Relationships
Relations between companies and/or people:
ownership, company roles, personal and
professional relations or family ties, events
such as transfer of shares, mergers,
involvement in fiscal crimes and the related
investigations

BRACCO software tools

analysis of free-text
data normalisation based on a model of the
domain (rules and taxonomies governing the
relationships - ontology) and based on a unique
identification of subjects
an inference engine to further analyse the
relations and draw conclusions (further relations)
graph analysis (social network analysis) and
statistics on groups or clusters of companies
visual navigation of relations

three main layers of

components

presentation layer
processing & storage
data sources

central knowledge
presentation layer
data analysis
BRACCO Ontology

data access
data sources

abstract and concrete

knowledge

presentation layer
data analysis
description of
real world

real-world facts
and occurrences

data access
data sources

structured and non-structured

data

presentation layer
data analysis
Taxonomies &
rules

Relations graph

Natural Language
Processing
Business Private- WWW Online
Register client DBs spiders Newspapers

DB adapters

analysing and enriching the

knowledge

presentation layer
inference
engine

graph
analysis

Taxonomies
& rules

Relations
graph

DB adapters
Business PrivateRegister client DBs

statistical
analysis
graph
statistics
warehouse

Natural Language
Processing
WWW
spiders

Online
Newspapers

outputs: navigation and

reports

Reports,
BRACCO Navigators
dossier (DeVisu, Redada, Soci-N)
statistical
inference
graph
analysis
engine
analysis
graph
Relations
Taxonomies
statistics graph (DB)
& rules
warehouse
DB connectors
Business
Register

Other PA
DBs

Natural Language
Processing
WWW

Online
Newspapers

REDADA navigator

investigating a person

inspecting relations and events

expanded node F. Corona

inspecting a sentimental relation

Overview of crimes

Crimes tree

focus on location of activities

Hotspots

focus on recent activity

focus on recent activity

Business navigator

investigating InfoCamere

identifying InfoCamere group

What about Silvio Berlusconi?

... and his group?

finding hidden relationships

GOTCHA!!

Berlusconi tree
[not the entire web of relations]

Indirect control Spadaccini group

Group Dossier
Aerofotogrammetrica Nazionale

The next steps

Further development of the data analysis
techniques and statistics on groups
Application to nearby domains (Naples project
on Public Tenders)
Validation with international shareholders data
(Infogreffe); presentations and experiments (data
exchange) with other BRs

future steps
data reliability measures
unique identification of subjects
new, customer-supplied relations