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Comment by airstrike | Hacker News Reader

from TFA

> Moody’s Analytics has found 21 million “red flags” associated with shell companies that could be used to enable financial crimes, from ancient directors to dubious addresses.

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"red flags" just means data entry errors, not intentional fraud.

Anyone who has worked in ETL knows data-in is usually garbage.

Yes, but there is a big difference between filling in some survey you don't care about and registering a company, where you might be criminially liable for any mistakes. I make damn sure any filings related to my company are correct.

It's not the founders of the companies that are making these errors, it is the bank's data entry employees typing in the data from hand written forms.

Most of these accounts were opened before online form submissions. Not to mention the ambiguity between date formats causing all sorts of issues. ...apostrophes in names, etc...

Data quality issues have a variety of causes.

In the UK company information is filed online with Companies House, by the company (or possibly a professional representative). Not by a bank data entry person.

And if the bank needs that data it should be able to download it.

So I don't understand where bank data entry comes in. However I only skimmed the article.

You forget that much of the data they looked as is decades old - before automated systems and computer data entry.

One would have to assume that it's a combination of both.

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