Financial data is the foundation of any investigation into corruption and related financial crimes – but a lot of data is not available in a format that is easy to collect and analyse.

Investigators often waste many hours combining data from different formats, manually re-typing financial data contained in images or poor scans, or copy-pasting information from the internet. Not only is this inefficient and frustrating: it may lead to errors that will throw the investigation or prosecution off course.

If you have ever come across those problems, our new free eLearning course on Data Cleaning and Harvesting is for you!

With the data cleaning and harvesting techniques covered in this eLearning course, you will be able to more efficiently collect, convert and analyse (financial) data in Excel from different sources. Ultimately, that will help you to identify suspicious transactions that might indicate illicit activity.

The new course on our popular online learning hub Basel LEARN is completely free. Basel LEARN benefits from core funding provided to our International Centre for Asset Recovery from the Governments of Jersey, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and the UK.

Learn by doing

In this course, you play the role of an investigator who is tasked with collecting and preparing financial data in Excel as part of a high-level corruption case. The case involves a corrupt politician called Trop Buder, who is suspected of using a front company “Best Food” to receive and launder bribes linked to mining deals.

As you go through the investigative tasks, you will learn how to:

• Prepare financial documents for data analysis
• Apply Excel functions to fix formatting errors
• Identify additional sources of financial data
• Use OCR software to digitise hard copies and convert them to Excel format
• Scrape data from websites.

The course is aimed primarily at financial analysts and investigators, but will be useful for anyone seeking to upgrade their Excel skills in this area. We recommend taking the foundational Financial Analysis Using Excel course first.

The Basel LEARN “universe”

Previous visitors to the Basel LEARN platform will recognise the fictitious world in which the simulated corruption case takes place. Countries include the United Republic of Sothole – the resource-rich but economically poor country in which Trop Buder exploits his position in government – as well as the financial centre of Archovia and the secretive jurisdiction of the Isle of Don.

Many of these elements, as well as the hands-on, interactive nature of the course, are visible in other eLearning courses on topics such as open-source intelligence and international cooperation.

As with all Basel LEARN courses, Data Cleaning and Harvesting is self-paced. You can start, take breaks and continue at any time, or repeat sessions if you need more practice.

After completing the course, you can download a certificate of completion to share with your employer, future employers and your personal networks.

Start LEARNing

• Take the course on Data Cleaning and Harvesting!