Transcript: Hidden Ledgers
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Host 0:19
thank you for joining us for the next hour or two in this episode of insight Myanmar podcast. In an age of nearly limitless content, we appreciate that you're choosing to take valuable time out of your day. To learn more about what is happening in Myanmar, it's vital for the story to be heard by people around the world. And that starts right now with you.
Brad 1:58
And welcome back. Today we're going to be delving into the exciting and unsung world of trade data. And my guest today is Savannah from the Center for Advanced Defense studies. And this is a topic that we tangentially touch on from time to time, but I don't think we've ever had a guest on who's able to go into quite as much detail as as you're going to be. So before we get into that, Savannah, I'd like to thank you very much for coming on. And I like to give you the chance to introduce yourself for our audience. Hi,
Savanna Slaughter 2:26
thank you so much for having me today. I'm really excited to get to have a captive audience for the trade data discussion. But my name is Savannah slaughter. I'm an investigative researcher for the human security team at sea for IDs, also known as the Center for Advanced Defense studies, where I lead our investigative work on Myanmar.
Brad 2:45
Okay, and so let's let's talk about C for IDs, because I think probably our audience is not particularly familiar with with the organization and what you guys really do. What's your what's your primary focus? And how did C for IDs come about?
Savanna Slaughter 3:00
Yeah, so we're a Washington DC based nonprofit that uses publicly available information to investigate illicit networks as they pertain to global security and human rights abuses across the world. So we don't just operate on human security, although my team does. But we work in various issue areas such as national REITs, natural resource security, wildlife crimes, as well as more national security, derivative issues, such as China, Russia, Iran. So incorporating a bunch of publicly available information, which I'm sure I will delve much more into, to help expose these networks and then take impactful actions working with government actors on the ground authorities, civil society organizations, take capacity building efforts or work any way we can to stop these networks.
Brad 3:48
Okay, so it sounds like you have a reasonably broad even global remit. So as concerns more specifically the Myanmar sphere, what is it that you guys are really sort of focusing on what do you what are you really doing there?
Savanna Slaughter 4:04
Yeah, of course. So we have two main investigative lines of effort going on with Myanmar right now. The first and probably foremost effort we're looking at is tracking military procurement. So how the junta stays in power and continues gaining military supplies via its relation to transnational networks and the international supply chain. So that ranges from looking at how western goods and products end up slipping into the supply chain, and inevitably helping out the junta to other state actors such as China, India, Russia, and their deliberate efforts to continue aiding the top dog. We're also looking at illicit financing and assets which that's kind of twofold as well. So illicit financing looking more so at in country, crony financing crony conglomerates as well as the industries and ways in which the tax But I was able to continue financing, there were efforts. So looking at me and my oil and gas enterprise as well as natural resources such as teak or Jade, and then also looking to see if we can identify assets abroad. So far that's looked primarily at Australia. And I hope by the time this episode comes out, we'll have some public work on that, which that might have to be reserved for a later podcast episode. But some some really exciting things moving forward, I think we've really consolidated our Myanmar work over the last year and a half, we've had some ad hoc lines of effort, I think going back to 2016, where we published a report called sticks and stones that looked at Rohingya hate speech on Facebook. And we've also worked with the Center for Information resiliency on the ocelli project, which is an interactive visual map that captures recon burn sites. So kind of a wide ranging variety of work on the subject, as well as working with journalists and other civil society organizations to upskill investigative methodology because we want to make sure that this is not just us, providing investigative effort against the junta, but facilitating that on a much higher level as well.
Brad 6:11
Excellent, I mean, that there is a long list of different things that you're touching on there. And I want to get into pretty much all of them in turn. But the before we get into that, let's sort of look at the methodology, because we have a lot of people who will come on and they will say, Well, I've got you know, information coming from on the ground. I've got people send me photographs and video and I've got all these types of of evidence you work predominantly with, I mean, the printed word on on sheets and tables of numbers. What, what is the really the raw data that you're gathering? Looking at? Where do you get it from? And how can you really utilize that?
Savanna Slaughter 6:52
Yeah, that's a great question. Because publicly available information is such a new and broad category of investigative data. You're right, it's very different than traditional underground human rights defenders pulling information. It's It's tricky, because publicly available information differs wildly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. And some jurisdictions are much friendlier than others. So when we say publicly available information, we mean things that the public can access, but are also paid resources. So essentially, corporate data, judicial data, trade data, property records, all of that and say, in the United States, it's really easy to find that information. You have searchable records for judicial information, you have corporate records that are easy to access property records that are easily searchable. And this might not be surprising to anybody who's listening. But that data is not so easily accessible. And Myanmar, for example, even just corporate data is incredibly hard to find these days, because two and a half years after the coup, so around last September, the Myanmar government took down most identifying information that you could find on the corporate registry. So it went from you could access officer information, the last three digits of the NRC number for cross confirmation, you could see principal place of business documents that had been uploaded, and they took all of that down. So unfortunately, these corporations can just act totally in secret. We've no window into that, besides previous examples from when we were able to scrape the data. And as you can imagine, there's a searchable property registry within Myanmar, that data is extremely difficult to find. So we're also fairly reliant on leaked data as well, which there's a number of incredible on the ground organizations and activist type actors who are doing really incredible work helping bring some light to a data scarce environment.
Brad 9:03
So I want to talk about that, because I, I have come across some of the data leaks. Some of the corporate data leaks like I've I've seen them myself. And what I was shocked by although perhaps I should not have been shocked by this. But what I was shocked by what I know, many of my colleagues were very frustrated by was looking at this data leak going. This is not digitized data. This is a photocopy of a handwritten document. And and the basically the software that would recognize the characters that would be able to turn that into a type of PDF that you would just hit Ctrl F and you can find the names that you're looking for. Is is not even sophisticated enough yet to be able to, to really pour over that. Are you finding that situation where you're looking at documentation, that's just even if you have it? It's very, very difficult to process it's very, very difficult to get through all of it. Alright, mostly dealing with information that is digitized and can be searched.
Savanna Slaughter 10:06
I have to say that one of the big strengths of C 40s is that we are a trends National Working organization. So we also have our own data team, which is incredibly fortunate. We have a platform that we utilize internally that allows for the OCR and so text recognition of documents that we upload as well as cross jurisdictional search functionality of all of our data holdings. So when we acquired the leaks, we were able to digitize OCR them. So that way, when we're conducting investigations and searching, for example, for a name of a corporation, it will also pull out names within those leaked data sets. And that makes our lives a lot easier. But I will say like everything else, Burmese is incredibly difficult to OCR. So the place that we get the luckiest is, there's a number of English lettered spellings of companies and these various leaked documents. So mostly, that's where we'll get lucky and flagged data. But if you, for example, had a bunch of handwritten records, that is something that we really wouldn't be able to OCR. So you'd have to continue to come up with some creative ways to work around this. Because yeah, it's it's definitely tricky. And even other leaks, like the NY Vankleek, are in tricky file formats to bulk analyze, so we do our best with it and apply whatever kind of data solutions we can buy. Yeah, even even in these situations that can be tough.
Brad 11:40
And even just in this, in this sort of beginning of the discussion, it's already something that stands out to me is a pertinent question, because we all understand the concept of data. But when you when you tell me about publicly available information about a company, if I wanted to find out, for example, about Google or YouTube, I remember I was having a discussion with a friend of mine a few weeks ago, and we thought, this decision that this company has made this new product that they've rolled out or this change that they've made, surely this will not be beneficial to the company. And so we tried to jump in, and we tried to see, okay, what percentage of the revenue comes from these types of sources? Or how has revenue changed over time? And we found that that was very difficult to find a lot of the publicly available corporate information is pretty basic stuff. Like, where's the company registered? What is its official name? What is its, you know, tax number, who are the directors of the company things like this, but not really a super deep dive into the internal workings. They're all charts that all their employees, all the locations that they own? Their revenue streams and their finances and things like this? How much insight can you really gain from the just the publicly available information into these companies?
Savanna Slaughter 13:01
It really depends from company to company, which feels like a cop out answer. But unfortunately, it's true, because it really ranges from, you might find a tiny company listed that, for whatever reason becomes apparent to you that it's a shell company. But if you're setting up a shell company, you're not going to set up a website, you're not going to have annual reports, you're probably not going to be on social media. And in that case, it's very, very limited what we can figure out about them, we can identify, for example, officers and try to connect it to a broader corporate network, that might be my best bet. But other than not, you're not likely to gather too much data. If you're looking at a much larger organization, say a publicly traded one, your options are a little bit better. Companies, especially the larger ones, publish annual reports and meeting minutes that cast a surprising amount of insight into what an organization is up to the things they discuss their upcoming plans. You might find other agreements with other companies, media mentions, social media data, such as LinkedIn or Facebook can provide either more corporate information and insights to what their priorities are, for example, if they're big on social impact, and they're posting over and over about all the good things that they're doing, but then you see in trade data that Oh, no, like, actually supporting the top at all. That's kind of problematic, but an interesting comparison. So I think that's probably this is a good question, because it points to the key takeaway that you can't operate with a single data source ever. Basically, you have to combine it with the other resources we have and really try to maximize it. All of this data fits together to form a puzzle and working through the other types of publicly available information. And then, in certain cases, particularly with Myanmar slotting this in for leaked information or defector human sources as relevant, but at least in that case, you have a lead of some And that helps narrow it down.
Brad 15:02
So alright, so this is interesting. And take me that right? You said, you look at this company, and then you go through the trade data and you see that they're supporting the tomato. What does that look like? How, like, I assume that you wouldn't just be looking through lines and lines of transactions. And there's a line saying, you know, Bill for 200 assault rifles to military regime, like that would be far too on the nose. What does it look like for you when you suddenly hit that moment? And you realize these guys are running up front for the military?
Savanna Slaughter 15:38
Yeah, well, let me I guess, take it back for a second in terms of what we have access to in terms of Myanmar trade data. Because, unfortunately, as you may have gathered with what we spoke about just now with scarcity of data, and Myanmar, Myanmar doesn't publish their trade data either. But what's fortunate about this is, we can still get a sense of what Myanmar trade data looks like based on what we call mirror trade data. So that is when Myanmar is conducting an international transaction with another country, that data is captured in the other end of the transaction, if that makes sense. So for example, if you're conducting trade with India, a import to Myanmar is recorded as an export from India. So that transaction will be captured in Indian trade data. So basically, the reverse the flip transaction is captured on the other end. So we see that with really good trade data sources such as the United States, India, but unfortunately, there's some jurisdictions that we really don't have insight into. Because if that jurisdiction is not publishing trade data, and Myanmar is not publishing trade data, there's very little way we can see that and unfortunately, like China is one such jurisdiction, you wouldn't be able to capture any flows from North Korea, besides getting lucky with like very limited, leaked or released Myanmar trade data that I don't know if we've ever particularly been able to discover the true sourcing of but we typically work with third party trade data aggregator platforms. And there's two main ways we can go about looking at this, there's some search functionalities that you could literally just type in Directorate of procurement. And you'll be able to see all the recorded shipments that have gone to the Director of Procurement. This is a pretty, pretty basic workflow, I'd say. So a lot of a lot of these shipments have been spotted and identified, and I think had been a pretty good starting place for a lot of investigations. But that's what forces creativity on their side, and then in turn our side as well to identify these further shipments. But after that, you can filter I guess, more by goods, descriptions, or HS codes, which I can speak about what that what that means, as we get into more detail about we're actually looking at with the raw trade data. But there's a number of different ways we can start taking a look at this.
Brad 18:21
answer your question? Yes, yeah, but just just on this AmeriTrade data like i Okay, so I understand the concept when it comes to international. But I'm wondering, does that phenomenon of that mirror exist domestically? Because presumably, even if two companies are exchanging something, both companies will have a mirrored record of that exchange? Do you ever have a situation where one company has tried to hide a transaction, but the other company has failed to hide it or they didn't think to hide it? And you still have that domestic lead that well, one company was engaged in something, and the fingers are pointing to this other entity, even though that entity is staying silent?
Savanna Slaughter 19:02
Yeah, I think that's a tricky case, because it really varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction in terms of what you can or can't strike from trade data. Some jurisdictions let you remove your name entirely. In some cases, as we will talk about with the piece that I just collaborated with Frontier on, you can literally fill in an obfuscated consignee in that case, the master, but there's other indicators and trade data that will allow you to get hence of who the ultimate receiver actually is. I think one of the bigger things that ends up obscuring a lot of shipments is freight forwarding, where you literally just hire another company to handle all of your shipping needs. And they will often be listed as both the shipper and the recipient on trade data which offers basically zero insight into who is actually buying or receiving the product and selling In that case, you don't even have to go through the trouble of getting yourself removed on one end of the trade data. But there's things that we can look for to get around it. Unfortunately, this is tied a little bit to luck. But for example, there's one column on trade data that says notify party. And occasionally, the notify party will be different than the actual recipient. And that can be a clue of who else is involved in the transaction. It's, of course, you know, like everything else, you have to apply a certain degree of critical analysis, and not just make assumptions based on what you're seeing. But I've had cases where the named recipient was a completely nameless shell company, but their notify party was some much bigger Vietnamese company. And then I was able to pull records for both companies and ended up linking them together based on a legal representative. So there are cases where people slip up, even if they're trying to obscure it, but you can't rely on that situation at all.
Brad 21:00
So okay, so paint a picture for me here, just of the sheet of data you're looking at, because you've used some phrases here, notify party master consign or consignee. First question is, when you look at trade data, is it generally standardized across the board? What types of entries there are for this for this piece of information? Or does it completely depend on the just to the jurisdiction? And secondly, what do these words mean? Like what's it called sign when it consignee and a notified body and the master and so on?
Savanna Slaughter 21:38
Yes, so happy to address those questions? No, so it's not standardized across jurisdiction to jurisdiction, although there are things that remain very similar across jurisdiction to jurisdiction. So for example, I guess the words I've been throwing around content or concept me are pretty standard across all forms of train data, although you might have their other names. So a con signer is the shipper, the person who's sending it, the consignee is the recipient. So you might have words such as shipper and recipient on the trade data, instead of content, or consignee. But they all have the ultimate same meaning. You'll also typically have goods description, which will have a description of what's in the shipment. And I hate to say this over and over for every type of data. But really, this ranges from being as detailed to have serial numbers for products on it to people can just leave it blank or can put in incorrect information or just the most vague things imaginable. And then we'll also typically have dates on shipments. And then the other most common thing is what we call an HS code. So it just codes at the global level our six digit codes that basically serve as a classification system for goods, and you'll start off in a section. So for example, minerals, and then as you add progressive numbers to this code, you narrow it down more and more and more and more. So by the time you get to say HS code 2710 that denotes petroleum oils and oil is obtained from bituminous minerals other than crude oil. Not that I'm an oil expert, or can tell you exactly what that means. But it's signaling that you're looking at a specific type of oil at that point. And you can narrow it down progressively further. And so that really helps when we're trying to look at things from a top down analysis and functionally sort just by goods instead of looking at individual bad actors of interest.
Brad 23:49
So when you say the goods description can be falsified, or it can be left blank, is the HS code easily falsifiable? Or is there some verification that means that you can trust that the HS code is accurate? From what
Savanna Slaughter 24:02
I understand? It's typically classified by the importer, but I think, like all data, you can't take anything for granted. I think it's designed for the illicit legal world. So it's not always equipped to handle people with bad intentions, for example, even dates on trade records, you can't take for certain, because you might look at it and say, Oh, well, this was shipped on January 15. It's like, that's great. That's clear. But that's, that's not even a given. For example, India could put in dates different than Russia, because it might be that they're putting in bulk dates for a whole bunch of shipments at the same time. So they're saying, Okay, we're just classifying all of these documents or putting them all on on January 15, and they're all getting the date January 15. So as hard data and I guess reliable is trade data can seem on the surface, it's really good to not necessarily take it as a truth. It's good to always be critical and thoughtful. And unfortunately, if we were seeing things like falsification of HS codes, it would be probably really hard to tell. I mean, especially if you have things in containers, because there's no visual way to confirm that. And, you know, this could range from a number of things, corruption at ports, for people falsifying documents, I mean, there's a lot of ways to try to mess with parts of the system. So I would say by and large, it's not super likely, but it's definitely a possibility.
Brad 25:49
So this raises an important question to me, are these documents, legal documents, because if, for example, we were looking at a bill of lading, rather, the effectively the you know, the shipping list of stuff that you're sending, like, that's as far as I know, a legal document, and it can be used, and it will be used by the government for, among other things, tax purposes, if you are falsifying the goods that you are sending the therefore the taxable nature of the goods that you're sending the quantity of the goods, you're sending the value of the goods you're sending, you are risking cheating the government out of its taxes, and governments hate that. And yet, it sounds like these trade data are taken so lackadaisically that you can falsify what financial year what financial quarter the thing was sent on? You don't from it from the thing that you listed, you didn't list any section that actually gives the stated financial value of the goods being being sent. What what is this? These documents like? What are these trade data? Are they legal documents? Is there any theoretical verification? Would they be used by the Tax Office of the government?
Savanna Slaughter 27:06
Yeah, so I'm not a lawyer. So unfortunately, I can't speak to whether or not this is considered to be a legal transaction, or if you would be held liable for any modifications made at a port. But I know that at least in terms of investigations, and cross corroborating this or proving that people are not doing what they say they're doing, partners have worked with leaked documents, such as when Amnesty International was able to obtain information showing the true transaction records on jet fuel shipments that weren't being captured and trade data. Or there's even been legal ramifications where people were falsifying shipments such as in Singapore, I think a couple of men were held accountable for trying to mislead international business partners about where military grade sonar equipment was actually going. So it's definitely a risky thing to be doing. I think, unfortunately, though, if you think about it, in Myanmar, if you were falsifying import records for military purposes, on behalf of the military, what authority figure is going to hold you accountable for that. So that's why it's really dangerous to have these whole illicit networks. It's not just one bad actor, it's typically a whole series of them all working in concert, which makes it really dangerous, but we just try to do what we can apply some critical analysis.
Brad 28:38
Let's go in an important direction here, because you're talking about sonar equipment here. And horrifyingly, I know this is an old problem, because there was an episode of Yes, Minister that that spoke exactly about this back in the 1980s. The obfuscation of the end user for military equipment and the way that military equipment can be funneled to users that are even enemies of the state that is supplying the equipment. You mentioned, as well, earlier in this interview that you were looking at Western products that are are winding up in the hands of the Myanmar military. Is there an element of sanction busting going on? Like, are you looking at? I know, you've said that you're not a lawyer? I'm not I'm not asking you to necessarily give me a deep dive on PayPal, but it sounds like you're looking at at criminality, you're looking at someone who is taking goods from one jurisdiction and moving it to another jurisdiction when the supplier would not consider that to be a lawful end user. Is that actually something that you're investigating and looking at?
Savanna Slaughter 29:56
Yes, it definitely is. I think sanctions evasion is one of The bigger things that we try to take a look at. I mean, we work closely with government partners. So any information that we find on this can go directly to authorities who can take action on this or consider and potential sanctions packages. But it is fairly tricky to identify. And there's, of course, the different standards required to meet it. And it gets especially complicated if you have multi jurisdictional companies, as I'm discovering, try to look to see what EU sanctions apply across a variety of different assisting actors. And I hope this is something that will we'll be coming out in a few months can we might have more to talk about then. But yeah, it's it's certainly one of the things we try to take a look at, because it's a place that we can hopefully stop and have an impact on the system. Whereas other jurisdictions, it's obviously important to point out how Russia or China are interacting with Myanmar. But that's something that we can have, I think, much less of a tangible impact on. I mean, it also goes the other direction. For example, looking at natural resources coming into the United States, from Myanmar, particularly teak has been the one that I've looked at. But there are sanctions of Asians going both directions as well. So that's definitely something that's fairly important for us to try to spot if we can.
Brad 31:27
And that's, that's an interesting one, because we have had people who come on and they talk about specific goods, we've done an entire episode on on the illicit teak trade. And we we've definitely had, you know, people come on and talk about rare earth metals and logging and Jade and gemstones and things of this nature. So it seems like there's a two way trade happening here, where even Western countries that are part of theoretically are part of sanctioning regimes are both supplying and receiving from from Myanmar. And I'm just wondering, do you have an insight as to where did the system break down like this should not be occurring? Is it the case that you have parties in the West proper? who know that they are supplying to or purchasing from the hunter? Or is it more that the hunter has really good front businesses in third party countries, and they are taking advantage of, you know, Western entities who are in good faith, believing that they are purchasing things that were produced prior to the coup that were warehoused? Or that are just purchasing from some innocent Singaporean company? Like, do we know where the point is at which someone did something that they know they should not have been doing?
Savanna Slaughter 32:52
I think the answer is probably both are true. I think, for example, since I've looked into teak pretty closely, I can say that some of these major teak importers in the US published on their website, that they claim that they have been working in the tech industry for 1020 years. And they have the detailed understanding of the supply chain and are in contact with the sawmills on Myanmar, will even post quote saying things like, just so customers know, the current like political situation in Myanmar might be affecting TKE prices. And so based on that, those statements, it's hard to imagine that they don't know, of course, we can't say that for sure. But in cases like that, where they claim to be aware of the supply chain and claim to be aware of the political realities and are aware of the sanctions, continued teak imports, really suggest that it's continued. And knowing that they just, they don't care. But on the other side of those T transactions, I think we can see something really interesting is that Myanmar timber enterprise, which is the sanction entity by the US, doesn't do any of the exporting themselves. So they auction off the eligible teak to smaller trading companies, who then proceeded to send the tech to the US. This is well known and well documented. So at this point, I don't think it's much of an excuse. But what I will say is, it's very indicative of the fact that trying to catch these shell companies is a lot like Whack a Mole. It you know, you take one out, and they just keep popping up and proliferating. And so that's kind of an unfortunate reality with with dealing with this. I mean, even looking at trade data, for example, if I'm conducting a top down much more data oriented analysis of things. It's really hard to say just looking at a random company that has no website if it's military official Like it or not, because I can see seeing all of these fuel shipments. But, you know, normal people use fuel, normal businesses used fuel. And if you don't have insider information, and knowing that something's connected to the military, you can't automatically make that judgment just because it's fuel and Myanmar. It's a really dangerous analytical assumption to make. And I think that's why this India frontier piece that we did was so interesting, because it was one of the few cases where I was looking through oil, actually, and I come across a recipient known as the master, if it had been any other shell company, that wouldn't have been weird enough for me to flag that. Because like I said, it could just be a normal company. But the master seemed to be a specifically weird type of recipient. And that prompted me to go ahead and look up the goods description, which I wouldn't have recognized off the bat, it was a whole string of letters, I believe, LS h f, space, HS D, which stands for low sulfur, high flash, high speed diesel, I think. And I don't know what that is off the top of my head. I'm not an oil expert, but because it was such a weird shipment that prompted me to look it up. And according to Baroque, petroleum comes, you know, product guides, that's Navy grade, high speed, diesel oil. And so all of a sudden, not saying it's impossible, but it seems much more likely that the your average civilian would be purchasing Navy grade diesel fuel. And so then that's what prompted me to look into it further.
Brad 36:43
There was a number of guests that we have on who say things along the lines of Well, I'm not going to accuse anyone of criminality. But things look a little bit like there's a pattern forming here, there is a very strong pattern forming here. It's very depressing. And I understand that you don't want to, you know, make accusations against anyone, we don't want to get into a legal problem. But there definitely seems to be a lot of people who are looking at a lot of data saying something does not add up, somebody should have known better. So the question, then that comes is, you know, and I know that you mentioned foreign assets, you know, tracking foreign assets of the military? Are you at sea for IDs, or people who are doing work similar to yours? Are you able to put this information on the desks of policymakers in governments who can ultimately take action and launch new waves of sanctions against entities that you've identified as as participating in this type of trade?
Savanna Slaughter 37:43
And certainly get it on their desks, or at least their email inboxes. But, of course, it's it's hard to say, what causes governments to take the actions that they do. I mean, we certainly try our best to have impact and provide information to people that can make these differences. But I think we've all been watching the rounds of sanctions that came out from the US for the third coup anniversary. So clearly, the US has its own political agenda. But we we do try our best to make sure this information gets out there. And that's why we work with journalists, partners and civil society organizations as well. To highlight what we can and I what I will say is these partnerships are also so important because frontier and the journalist I worked with at Frontier Allegra Mendelssohn did such a fantastic job flushing out the story in a way that our data alone simply because when I was just looking at this, and seeing, Oh, the master of Navy grade fuel, like we said, I don't want to get in legal trouble. So there's, there was no way to confirm who this was going to. And we still weren't able to confirm it was going to the military. But you know, being able to combine the expertise of a lot of other people have confirming that the master is not an entity. It's not a shell company. It's just a placeholder when you want to not list the consignee. All of these things were things that frontier Myanmar was able to confirm doing human sourcing. And so as important as this publicly available information is it's infinitely more valuable when we combine it with the more traditional types of investigation and data types. And I think that's why this the community of people working and advocating for Myanmar is so, so valuable, and it was much stronger to be able to share this completed article with US embassy with government partners with USAID, the State Department with the greater context involved, and so I think that's a position that seaport IDs is also unique and that we can help connect our partner data to government actors as well.
Brad 40:00
I think yeah, that that interaction and the connection of the different puzzle pieces that different people hold is something that is not, I think, focused on enough. So it's, it's very good to hear that that is a direction you're going in. But speaking of the puzzle pieces, some of the countries you've mentioned so far, specifically, Russia, China and India, have have come up multiple times in this in this discussion I want to focus on on those briefly. We know that Russia and China both have for their own reasons, in their own ways, supported the hunter post coup. But, as you say, Chinese trade data, not really something that you could readily get, I assume you can't just put in a Freedom of Information request to Beijing, I assume that Russian trade data would not be a lot easier to to access, have you been able to gain any insight into the interaction between Russia, China and Myanmar? Or is the whole triplet just a black hole of trade?
Savanna Slaughter 41:03
Well, you won't be surprised about Russia. I mean, of course, we have to be careful when it's less official government sources, and more all the data leaked side, which is what my understanding of where a lot of Russia, trade data comes from is, but we do actually have really strong Russian trade data holdings, et Cie for IDs, which I think sets us apart from a lot of other organizations. And I would say that Russia is probably one of the most consistent suppliers of military parts of the junta. I mean, there's some interesting trade going on back and forth. But like you said, China is definitely much more of a black hole, which is unfortunate. Given their constantly shifting stance on ongoing political activity, it would be incredibly interesting to know what over the border trade looks like, especially, you know, as we hear more and more rumors about overland trade for jet fuel, that's just something that, unfortunately, within trade data, we can't confirm, which is incredibly disappointing. But yeah, it's just one of those things you have to try to work around. I mean, you can, to a certain extent, see business activity, as conducted by Chinese nationals, given that within the Myanmar corporate data, it registers office, your nationality. So the way we have the data ingested in our internal systems, you can filter to see like, how many Chinese owned companies there are. Or even you can see Chinese holding companies for Myanmar based companies or joint stock companies. So there's a little bit of window there as well, as you know, these business owners can appear in leaked data. So I've come across some Chinese passports and the leaked data as well. But yeah, on the trade data, China's stopped publishing trade data after I think, late 2010, or something like that. So it's, it's really not not something we have access to anymore. But you know, their company, annual meeting minutes are pretty good. So that's at least one way we can also see about other Chinese business activity going on in Myanmar.
Brad 43:25
Okay, so that there was a little bit there, but not, not a huge amount. How about India? Is there any more transparency from the Indian side? Or is it still pretty difficult to see into?
Savanna Slaughter 43:39
India has remarkably good trade data from what I've seen. I mean, it's very accessible across all the third party data aggregators. And I think, again, that goes back to this issue of if you're not sending things directly to the military, and if it's more nebulous goods, descriptions, that could be for civilian use. It's hard to identify who's actually receiving it. So I think, I mean, a lot of partners have done really good work building out screening lists, and like dirty lists of companies that are known to do business with the junta and that's incredibly valuable and building out our collective knowledge of companies that might be conducting this activity. I think, particularly, we don't see, at least I haven't been fortunate enough to see a lot of Orpheus, weapons transfers in recent times. I mean, the only exception to that is Russia, but at that point, it's it's kind of common to see so it's less groundbreaking and exciting. But I don't, and I'm honestly not sure why that is. I have the same issue with jet fuel is that Jeff who will does not appear? In almost any trade data sets I've looked at, and I've looked at almost all of them, I want to say, it's, it's very bizarre, I don't know if it's being removed if it's just being obscured if these descriptions are blank, but it's, it's not being captured. And we've managed to find a couple of shipments that we're pretty excited about, and I believe frontier Myanmar will be working on. But beyond that, it's kind of a black hole.
Brad 45:33
That's fascinating. I remember that we did an interview about fuel specifically. And we did, the idea was that you couldn't necessarily track the trade data. But you could definitely see that a vessel carrying fuel had entered a specific port, and there are only so many ports in your mother out there equipped to be able to accept fuel. The difficulty there, of course, was that fuel is a dual use good. And it's it's almost impossible to determine whether the fuel is actually intended for civilian targets or military targets. And so that's that's kind of why I'm interested in what you said about the naval fuel. Because it sounds, although, clearly, neither of us are experts in fuel, but it sounds like you may actually have found a case of unequivocally military purpose, fuel being being sent to the country. So can you can you go back to that? And tell us a little bit more about that discovery?
Savanna Slaughter 46:38
Yeah, so I think a really interesting thing that frontier was able to find about fuel entering the country is that it's held for 30 days before it's distributed, kind of out to its ultimate buyer. So it could be that even if it was just a perfectly normal trader listed as the recipient, they might have no idea where it ends up going, because it's held and then eventually shipped off to its end recipient. But I do think that given the circumstances, it's it's less likely that in average, it's not like regular petrol at all. So I do think it's a fairly interesting discovery, I wish we had been able to confirm that it was going to end us with the military, but I think, without any letters, or contracts, or the firm kind of business data, you can never really confirm that. But you're absolutely right that. And I have a lot of respect for the work that Amnesty has done tracking ship movements, but it's it's so important to substantiate with other data factors, because yeah, these all these ports that accept jet fuel also accept other types of fuel as well. So it's really hard to say whether or not what's happening with with this fuel. And it's really interesting, too, because even in cases that seem pretty cut and dry, like I've seen in Russian trade data, where it's literally a military transaction, it's literally a military only equipment, but they'll still label it for civilian use only. So they do try to make it difficult for us.
Brad 48:32
It just sounds so strange to me, because, you know, he'll in the civilian world, if, if I were on the road, and they were a truck in front of me, transporting any substance of any level of hazard or danger, and that truck fails to adequately display the fire diamond and give me the information that I would need to know. Or more importantly, that emergency crews would need to know that, hey, this is a potentially toxic material, this is a potentially flammable material, oxidizing agent, what have you. I mean, that truck driver would be punished, the company would be punished. Probably multiple companies along this chain of supply would be punished for failing to adequately inform all and sundry that I am moving something that is potentially dangerous. And yet, it sounds to me like we're living in a world where if you're moving, the most dangerous goods are the things that are explicitly designed to kill internationally. You can just lie. I mean, it might be hyperbole, but it sounds to me like you could be transporting machine guns and you could still put teddy bears on the bill of lading. And no one's no one's going to check and no one's going to, to say anything. Like maybe I'm taking a particularly pessimistic view here, but that's kind of the the image that that you seem to be painting here. Is it? Is it really that dire? Or is At least some sort of control, there's some sort of hard limit over which of these countries just would not step.
Savanna Slaughter 50:09
I mean, I think it does come down to jurisdiction. Ultimately, I think that type of thing would be way less likely to fly in the United States, for example, that's why we have Customs and Border Patrol to track down and expose that type of thing. And, you know, our other teams see 40s work with Customs and Border Patrol to alert them to potential high risk goods entering the country that shouldn't be. And so you know, place there are places that do safeguard against this. And but unfortunately, when you're looking at to countries such as Russia, Myanmar, you know, there might not be that internal protections, or you could be more susceptible to bribes, for example, and more people more likely to look the other way. Although, I guess, as we can probably see from the data, there's less incentive to hide military shipments, if you are Russia, because no one's gonna hold you accountable for it. I think. I mean, I always take a stance of erring on the side of caution, because I have to challenge the data that I'm seeing it's it's incredibly dangerous to make assumptions and rely on things that you can just just see and taking it for granted, if that makes sense. So I think maybe I also have a more pessimistic view of of this, I think, again, the system is set up for licit and legal transactions. And there are safeguards in place. But not always. And so that's why even crossing like the US Mexico border, you'll see people get busted all the time trying to bring things in, but some people get through. And it's it's just one of those things that that really ranges, but we have to be alert for because there are bad things happening in the world. And it's our job to try to stop it. And so if we assume we're pretty optimistic view of this, that really limits our ability to track it down and capture it.
Brad 52:12
So I know this is going to be like a very awkward thing for you to try to estimate. I apologize in advance. But is there any quantification of of what you through trade analysis and data analysis have been able to uncover like, is there any way to sort of measure whether you know the percentage of the trade that's going on or $1 value of of the stuff that you can you can track? Is there any way for you to assess? How much of the picture? Are you seeing how largest slice of the pie? Is it that you've been able to uncover through this methodology? Or are you just sort of uncovering things in a cave, whose edges you can't see, and you can't possibly estimate how large the whole room is?
Savanna Slaughter 53:07
I hate to liken myself to being in a cave. But I I do think that it is really hard to tell what percentage of the trade data we're seeing. So for example, for an ongoing investigation, I'm working on behalf we did manage to uncover just a very lucky piece that I think it was Myanmar origin trade data that related to a Chinese entity that we were looking at. And you know, we had a handful of shipments. But like I think you're alluding to, we have no idea what percentage of trade that's actually representing between this Chinese entity and the Myanmar military, it could be all of it, it could be just a fraction of it. And that's, unfortunately, really hard to estimate. So I think we just just keep working with what we have. And even dollar estimates are a little bit hard to deal with, because on some trade platforms, they automatically aggregate $1 value for you based on like other inputted data, so you might not even be seeing $1 amount that was reported on customs form rather than being estimated by an AI. So they're basically I'll try to make it as hard as possible for us.
Brad 54:32
I'm just wondering, surely, I mean, maybe not surely, but like does not exist some sort of document with the dollar value on it. Like it seems if I purchase something in the store, I get given a receipt, it lists the dollar value. At the very least, I would imagine that if companies are doing trade with one another, especially if it's international trade somewhere along the line. Number one, some One had to estimate the value. Number two, someone had to sign off for the fact that the money was exchanged and that the goods were delivered. And number three, most likely, currency somewhere had to be transformed from one currency to another currency because international trade usually takes place in even a third currency. So wouldn't there exist these types of financial records? Like they must exist somewhere? Are you are you saying that those themselves can be obfuscated? Or are you saying that you simply cannot gain access to those types of documents?
Savanna Slaughter 55:32
They definitely exist, it's just more of a matter of what goes on to the documentation at customs itself. So it may be required, it may not be required, it might just be the kind of field that you don't fill out when you're, you know, hurry to get something shipped. There definitely is about you assign, like you said, with all transactions. But most of these are internal company documents. And unfortunately, given that we only deal with publicly available data. Unless they're publishing and bragging about this somewhere which it never ceases to amaze me sometimes how self incriminating people can be on their websites. We just, we just don't know for sure.
Brad 56:13
I mean, that's, that is, I don't know, it is quite shocking. To discover just how easy it is for for massive enterprises to hide. This tray is especially considering how significant and how dangerous this this trade is. So I'm wondering, can you tell us about the next steps? Can you tell us about anything that you you're currently working towards? Or anything that you are hoping to, to be working towards in the near future?
Savanna Slaughter 56:49
That's a good question. I mean, I think just trying to keep pushing our methodology, clearly, I work with a lot of trade data. So fairly. I guess I've gone through a lot of it at this point, filtering by all sorts of areas, HS codes, looking for suspicious buyers, suspicious goods descriptions. I think, as as I move forward, I mean, I hope for closer partner relationships and working together to combine more leaked datasets and other various methodologies to keep pushing the limits on what we can do. Because yeah, I don't mean to have been, it's such a grim picture of trade data, it has provided a lot of valuable information. But I think what I'm seeing at this point, now, three years after the coup, is a lot of the obvious things have been revealed. Other organizations such as justice for Myanmar have done really, really incredible work, exposing a lot of early and even pre coup, examples of food shipments that are problematic. So I think moving forward with this is just going to require a lot more innovation, in terms of identifying companies of interest, perhaps working to develop some screening lists or building out directors have interest in combining corporate data in a new way to to form like screening lists for shell companies and things like that. But I'm just excited to I mean, as we progress, we get more trade data and more events keep happening. So it's really a live updating. situation. But you know, there's all sorts of data out there flight data, maritime data. And even I guess, moving into more fringe things like IP address tracking and things like that. I don't, as much as I love trade. And we've talked about it so much on this episode, I, I don't want that to be the only thing that informs my investigations.
Brad 58:59
Absolutely. And for us, looking forward, hopefully, we will have you back back on our podcast multiple times in the future to discuss the different elements of this and the different types of this. But I think as far as, as this episode is concerned, just to get the audience acquainted with, see for IDs, get them acquainted with the trade data. I think you've provided a very important, very broad, very informative overview and insight.
Savanna Slaughter 59:28
Yeah, thank you for that. And thank you so much for having me on today. I hope this has been informative for people who are listening. I really do love talking about this type of thing. I think investigations are both so important and also the coolest thing in the world. So I think to end this off, I just invite everybody listening to think about how many different aspects of society interact constantly and by that I mean, even just The action of you know, making a shell company or participating in illicit activity, you have to touch so many points of our legal system, you have to if you're shipping, for example, ivory to a different country, you have to drive to the port, which will record license plate information, depending on like, what country you're in. And then fill out customs records and go through a shipping container which can be tracked and then on a boat, which has registered owners and insurers import agents and sailors. And then it will arrive in a company country and go to another company and go through this process again. And each one of these points, interacts with a different tenant of our legal society that we take for granted every day. And each of these things produce data points. So just I think considering how much data we generate, on a daily basis, through all of our actions, and all of our interactions with the rest of society is a truly humbling and phenomenal thing. I mean, every time I think about just how much information we produce on social media, it blows my mind. So yeah, I just encourage people to be cognizant of, you know, there's so much we can find out about organizations, but it's about individuals as well. So just not taking that for granted is what I would say.
Host 1:01:45
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