The association's open-source search — now called Global Open Data — has been extended over the
past days. Everything below is live: the whole of it for members at /intelligence/search, and a
public summary of any search for anybody on the Global Open Data page. Every result a member sees
still carries the source it came from, the date it was retrieved and a link to the record.
It recognises what you type
Type a number and the search says what it may be before it answers: a Ukrainian ЄДРПОУ, a Russian ИНН or ОГРН, a Polish NIP, a Czech IČO, a French SIREN, a Norwegian organisation number, a Finnish Y-tunnus, an EU VAT number, a VIN, an IMO or MMSI, an aircraft registration, a phone number in E.164 with its country. Where the issuer publishes a check digit, the search says whether it agrees. Personal numbers — a Polish PESEL, a Ukrainian РНОКПП — are recognised and deliberately not searched.
New official sources
- Estonia, e-Business Register: 378,284 companies with their status — including liquidation and bankruptcy — legal form, address and former names.
- Ukraine, the ЄДР register of legal entities published by the Ministry of Justice: more than 890,000 entries with ЄДРПОУ, legal form, status, capital, and entries about termination and bankruptcy proceedings.
- Finland, the trade register through the Patent and Registration Office's open data.
- Poland, the Ministry of Finance's VAT taxpayer register: by NIP or REGON, with the VAT status.
- VIES, the European Commission's VAT validation for all 27 member states.
- NHTSA, decoding what a VIN says about a vehicle — which is not a registration, an owner or a theft record, and the result says so.
A phone number or an email address as a search term
Official registers publish contact details for the companies they hold. The association now mirrors 1.43 million of them — 736,892 phone numbers and 693,066 email addresses from the Norwegian and Estonian registers — and a search for a number answers exactly what the register says:
The number 51 99 00 00 is published in the record of EQUINOR ALGERIA AS (field "telefon") in Enhetsregisteret.
It does not say the number belongs to anybody. If a person directs that company, that is a separate fact from a separate record, and the search keeps the two apart.
Who the registers say is connected to a company
Board members, shareholders, beneficial owners, general managers, founders, signatories: where an official register states a role, the search can now find it by name, with the register's own word for the role and the dates it gives. Seven and a half million stated roles have been mirrored so far, from the Norwegian, Estonian and Ukrainian registers. A board member is never recorded as an owner, and a beneficial owner is never promoted to one.
A visitor may now ask a question too
The search box on the Global Open Data page is open to everyone. Ask it something and it runs a real search across the same sources, then answers with what the association is willing to say in public: how many sources were asked and how many answered, how many records were found, what kinds of object they are, and a couple of names per kind cut to their first word.
The whole record — the identifier, the contact details, the source and the link to it — remains a member's. The reduction is made on the server, so what a visitor is shown is all that is sent: there is no fuller answer hidden in the page waiting to be uncovered.
What is deliberately not stored
No national identity code from any register — Estonia's isikukood, a Ukrainian founder's line, a Norwegian date of birth. Where Ukraine writes a founder's name and home address on one line, only the name is kept. Nothing comes from leaked or closed sources, and no publisher's rules are worked around: where a register's robots.txt refuses automated access, the file is taken the way the publisher allows, at the pace the publisher asks.
Also new on the site
The site and the member's cabinet have been rebuilt in a dark, calmer design that works the same on a phone as on a desktop. Members can now ask for their account to be deleted from inside the apps, and the daily news brief is published automatically.