London – May 11, 2016 – Neo Technology, creator of Neo4j, the world’s leading graph database, announced that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has just released the Panama Papers offshore data on a Neo4j powered application. They’ve also made available a download of the Neo4j database along with an accompanying interactive tutorial. The data released contains information on more than 200,000 offshore entities that are a part of the investigation.
This news follows last month’s announcement that ICIJ used the Neo4j graph database along with the Linkurious graph visualisation platform to unearth the papers. The combined technologies were used to organise and access this highly connected data. This data leak exposed the highly interconnected and multi-layered offshore tax structures created for some of the world’s highest public officials and other celebrities by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca over the past 40 years.
With the publicly available app, anyone can search through the data and visualise the networks around thousands of offshore entities, including Mossack Fonseca’s internal records of the company’s true owners. The interactive database powered by Neo4j also includes information about more than 100,000 additional companies that were part of the 2013 ICIJ Offshore Leaks investigation.
The democratisation of technologies to make sense of connected data of this magnitude is an important aspect of a free and open society, and Neo4j has played a significant role in that evolving landscape – not only in the case of Swiss Leaks and the Panama Papers, but in solving future problems.
“We live in a different world with large amounts of data available to the public domain. The availability of technologies like Neo4j puts the power of big data analysis in the hands of everyday citizens, which can create a huge impact and drive positive change in the world,” said Emil Eifrem, Neo Technology’s co-founder and CEO.
According to Mar Cabra, ICIJ’s Data and Research Unit Editor, Neo4j was the only viable solution for meeting stringent ICIJ requirements. “It’s a revolutionary discovery tool that’s transformed our investigative journalism process,” she confirms, “because relationships are all important in telling you where the criminality lies, who works with whom, and so on. Understanding relationships at huge scale is where graph techniques excel.”
Graph databases are ideal for managing highly connected data and complex queries. Instead of using ‘tables’ the way a relational database does, graphs use special structures incorporating nodes, properties and edges to define and store data, making them highly proficient at analysing the relationships and any interconnections between data.
In conjunction, Neo Technology also announced the availability of a Graph Insight Solution to help companies use Neo4j to augment their anti-money laundering and anti-tax evasion efforts.
Kaynak : 