This page contains all the business registers used by Molfar OSINT analysts in their work. We regularly update and expand the list of legal entity registries: you can help us by writing a letter with recommendations to [email protected].
If you know how to search for information on the Internet, you know exactly why the registry of companies is so valuable to investigators and analysts. Below, we will illustrate the value of the legal entity registers collection gathered by Molfar analysts.
Let's imagine you need to find information about a person from Portugal. Your target's social networks look abandoned, the internet search has given you almost nothing. And suddenly, you find out about the business registry, where you can view property registered to any Portuguese citizen. You enter the name into the search, and in a minute you have all the information about the person: contacts, related companies, property owned, and even a photo. Why did this happen? Because you used the closed state register of legal entities, which is not even indexed by search engines. This is hidden information that the responsible government agency did not intend to spread at all. But you found this register and used it successfully. This example is a good illustration of the public registers’ value collected on this page.
In a broad sense, legal entity registries and other business registers are databases that contain valuable information about people, companies, movable and immovable property, intellectual property, etc. Take the Global Brand Database as an example: you can find general information about a registered brand there. This information includes the name of the legal entity, the country and exact address of registration, the name of the registrant (often a lawyer), the identification number, the type of brand activity, and other information depending on the company.
All the public registers contain unique data for a particular country. Competent government agencies regulate access to business registry information by law, so every register of legal entities contains different amounts of data. The legal framework of a country greatly affects the complexity of intelligence gathering.
These are websites that contain unclassified legal information about people, companies, and all types of subject property relations. Registries are called open because they aggregate only the data that is freely available under the legal framework of the country. Often, it is more convenient to use one of the data aggregators instead of government websites and resources: they work faster, have a user-friendly interface, and have plenty of additional functions.
Let's go back to the example of the international business search Global Brand Database: information about registrants is part of the public offer, so you can always find out legal information about a brand. For example, data about a legal entity is needed to file a lawsuit. Or, as in our case, for an in-depth study of the company and search for hidden interconnections.
Business registers contain a different amount of information depending on the country of search, its legislation, and the service itself. Basic information from the legal entity registers is almost always free: you can check whether the legal entity is registered, the name and address of the registration, find out about the authorized capital, get a list of documents in the registration file, the date of the last license fee payment, etc.
At the same time, detailed financial reports on companies, historical information, and information on owners, shareholders, and directors may be either completely unavailable or available after paying the cost of an extract. Molfar's OSINT analysts advise first studying all free open data from the business registers, and only then, if necessary, moving on to the paid functions of certain services.
Below is a list of registers of legal entities that you can filter by type and price of use. The first column indicates the country to which the register of legal entities belongs: the names can be sorted in forward or reverse alphabetical order, to change the settings, click on the switch near the column header.
