Follow the Money and the T-Index: Mapping Political Power and Hidden Networks with BridgeGap
Creators: name: Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina
name: Willems, Marieke
name: Letourneux, Noe
name: Koltsov, Mykhailo
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025
Subjects: Follow-the-Money
Transparency Index
Anti-Corruption
BridgeGap
YouControl

description: Celebrating international anti-corruption day 2024, this special webinar was organized under the Horizon Europe project BridgeGap, a key initiative driving innovative research and tools to combat corruption, enhance transparency, and promote good governance. In celebration of International Anti-Corruption Day, this event showcases two groundbreaking platforms—Follow the Money and the T-Index—that are reshaping the global fight against corruption, both further enhanced in the BridgeGap project.

 

About the Tools

Follow the Money is a cutting-edge tool supported by BridgeGap that traces financial flows, unmasks hidden networks, and analyzes complex webs of influence. By integrating data from 292 sources—including corporate registries, financial statements, court rulings, and international databases—it enables users to map cross-jurisdictional relationships, identify hidden beneficiaries, assess financial risks, and detect fraud or money laundering. Covering over 85 million companies and 77 million individuals globally, its intuitive visualizations transform intricate datasets into actionable insights for researchers, journalists, and compliance professionals combating corruption worldwide. Read more. 

 

The Transparency-Index (T-Index), introduces the first-ever comprehensive measurement of legal and operational transparency, currently covering 143 governments. The T-Index identifies gaps in policy implementation, facilitates cross-country comparisons, and provides a roadmap for the implementation of effective transparency policies. This initiative is the product of a collaborative crowdsourcing effort. In 2024, more than 60 public and private organizations contributed to creating a comprehensive picture of global transparency and establishing benchmarks to guide future improvements and government reform.

Featured Speakers





Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi – Renowned scholar on transparency and governance, Principal Investigator of BridgeGap  




Mykhailo Koltsov  – Head of Learning and Development Department at YouControl, presenting Follow the Money platform for tracing financial flows and mapping networks of influence.  




Noé Letourneux -  ERCAS consultant, presenting  T-Index, the cutting-edge measurement of real (de facto) transparency and its implementation globally.  



 

 What You'll Learn:  





Follow the Money: A tool for mapping relationships between businesses, individuals, and assets, uncovering hidden beneficiaries, and detecting financial irregularities.  




T-Index: The first-ever international measurement of real transparency, evaluating de facto practices rather than legal provisions, enabling benchmarks for reform, and driving policy-relevant research.  




How these tools, enhanced and used by BridgeGap researchers, complement each other to expose corruption networks and promote global accountability.




Real-world examples  



You can find the recordings of the webinar here: https://youtu.be/HJt3GjG1V04