Table of Contents
Introduction to Place Tracking
Sanctions are being imposed on Russian oligarchs all around the world, and everyone’s attention is focused on the immense riches of the people closest to Vladimir Putin. This ultra-wealthy group is well-known for its use of private planes, in addition to the opulent French mansions and superyachts worth several millions of dollars that are parked in Barcelona and Monaco.
The OCCRP has been monitoring Plane Tracking the flight paths of influential people for a long time, but now that more countries are preventing Russian flights from entering their airspace, tracking planesPlane Tracking is more helpful than it has ever been in assisting us in monitoring sanctioned individuals and examining their future plans.
What exactly is a Plane Tracking
Investigators from the OCCRP who follow plane Plane Tracking are looking into two different things:
Locating the aircraft that are owned by people of importance or that they use regularly
Keeping tabs on their past flight routes or whereabouts at the moment
Because it is standard practise to employ shell corporations and other devices of secrecy to conceal the genuine ownership of assets such as Plane Tracking, identification is typically the stage that proves to be the most challenging.
This brings us to point number two: The whereabouts of a plane can help us determine who flies it and ultimately lead us to the owner of the aircraft. The ability to correlate the movements of a plane with evidence that a person of interest has been in the same regions at the same time can be an essential component of the puzzle that is plane tracking.
Why does OCCRP engage in the Plane Tracking?
The OCCRP tracks the financial activities of corrupt people around the world. This requires locating the assets, such as private jets, that these individuals have purchased with their shady earnings, such as money.
At this time, we are focusing a great deal of attention on aircraft that are registered in countries other than Russia but are owned by Russian oligarchs. We do this to determine whether or not they continue to fly freely and to keep track of the direction in which they are currently travelling or may be going. It is very evident that the crackdowns are having the desired impact.
For instance, as a response to new regulations that the United Kingdom put on aircraft with connections to Russia, the Isle of Man, which is known as a renowned aviation refuge, de-registered at least 18 private Russian jets and helicopters.
Alisher Usmanov, a successful Russian businessman
ITAR-TASS News Agency/Alamy is credited for this article.
Alisher Usmanov is a successful Russian businessman.
There is a possibility that the Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov owns the Airbus A340 aircraft that is one of these. On February 28 it embarked on a flight from Germany to Uzbekistan. After another three days, its registration on the Isle of Man was revoked. Alexei Mordashov, another billionaire, is said to have flown his Bombardier Global 6000 from the Seychelles to Moscow. The following day, the plane Plane Tracking was removed from the registry on the Isle of Man.
We use the word “allegedly” because, despite the fact that it is commonly believed that Mordashov is the owner of the Bombardier Global 6000, the aircraft’s legal proprietor is a business named Springtime Ltd that is registered on the Isle of Man. Since the company’s incorporation in 2015, which occurred around the same time as the jet was given its registration, there has been a constant turnover of Isle of Man-based directors. A great number of aircraft have convoluted ownership hierarchies that are intended to conceal who the actual owners are.
Finding out who actually owns an aeroplane might provide journalists with fresh perspectives on the topic. According to the details of this account, business jets that were connected to Evgeny Prigozhin, a close acquaintance of Russian President Vladimir Putin, offered hints regarding the activities that Putin was engaged in while he was in Africa. We were also able to better comprehend how the United States government exploited Kenya as a launching pad for surveillance Plane Tracking supporting airstrikes in Somalia by using data from flight-tracking services.
How do I keep tabs on a specific aeroplane Plane Tracking ?
There are a number of commercial flight monitoring services available, some of which include FlightRadar24, FlightAware, Plane Finder, and Radar Box. These services enable users to track the real-time and historical movements of commercial and private planes. An in-depth explanation of what each service provides has been composed by Giancarlo Fiorella, an investigator working for the news organisation Bellingcat.
The majority of the signals that are gathered on these websites come from a public high-frequency radio band that is largely utilised by air traffic control systems and other aircraft. The acronym “ADS-B” refers to the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast technology that is used here.
Nonetheless, governments and individuals have the ability to make a request to have the data pertaining to their plane Plane Tracking removed from these platforms, and the providers typically comply with these requests. OCCRP relies on data sources such as Icarus Flights, which is run by the Center for Advanced
Defense Studies (C4ADS), and the OpenSky Network, which both offer unfiltered data on global flight tracking, in order to circumvent such restrictions. ADSB-Exchange, which calls itself the “world’s largest source of unfiltered flight data,” is the supplier of the data for Icarus, which goes all the way back to the year 2016.
A Bombardier Global 6000 private jet
An arrival is made by a private Bombardier Global 6000 aircraft at Manchester International Airport in England.These open source providers get their data from receivers all around the world that have been put up by amateurs and volunteers, which means that the quality and scope of coverage vary depending on where you are.
You might offer to set up a receiver free of charge as a way to contribute to expanding ADS-B coverage in any particular place. If you are interested in getting started, OpenSkyNetwork provides information on how you can buy, construct, or get a receiver for free. In a similar vein, C4ADS will make available ADS-B equipment to any anybody who voluntarily sets up a station.
A few things deserve your attention:
Although Icarus Flights is not open to the general public, investigators can get in touch with C4ADS to ask for permission to use the platform.OpenSkyNetwork is a nonprofit organisation that primarily serves the needs of researchers and academics. However, the organisation is happy to assist media who have requests that are well-defined.
How can I determine who the owner of a plane Plane Tracking is or where it is headed?
It is important to gather as much identifying information as you can, whether your goal is to locate the owner of a plane Plane Tracking or to follow its movements over time. You will need the registration of the aircraft, which is often commonly referred to as the tail number, in order to locate the owner. This is the one-of-a-kind identifier that is often located near the plane’s tail and shows the country in which it was registered. You may find a comprehensive list of nation identifiers over here.
Although some countries, such as the United States and the Isle of Man, make information about plane Plane Tracking ownership searchable in public registries so that it may be accessed by the public, it is uncommon for the registered owner to also be the beneficial owner.
Shell companies, trusts, and charter companies are common substitutes for the real thing. In situations such as this one, we require additional sources. Journalists have been able to connect individuals to offshore corporations because to leaks such as the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers. Several of these offshore companies own private jets.
Pictures shared on social media platforms are another fantastic method to bring people together via their shared interest in aviation.
The inside of a Lear 60 jet aircraft’s passenger compartment
The space contained within a Lear 60 jet aircraft’s cabin. When a Plane Tracking is registered, it is typically given a one-of-a-kind code for its ADS-B transponder that is known as a Mode-S hex code, or ICAO.
This code is used to transmit flight tracking data such as position, altitude, and speed for aircraft that are equipped with transponders. Most aircraft do not directly broadcast their registration numbers through ADS-B, so in order to make sense of tracking data, most flight monitoring services link the transponder codes to the registration numbers.
Identifiers, such as a plane’s registration and its Mode-S hex code, will be updated whenever the plane’s owner or the jurisdiction in which it is registered changes.
Consequently, if you want to trace a jet over a period of years that spans many ownership changes, you will need to know the manufacturer’s serial number, which is the one-of-a-kind identifier that was given to the Plane Tracking by the manufacturer of the plane. This never changes.
The final form of identification that you should be familiar with is the call sign, which pilots use to distinguish between different flights. In the case of private aircraft, the call sign is frequently the aircraft’s registration number, whereas in the case of commercial flights, it is typically the airline code followed by the flight number.
You can decode the airline codes that you see on different call signs by using the website of the International Air Transport Association. It is important to keep in mind that the same aircraft can have various call signs in the span of a single day, and it is also possible for many aircraft to share the same call sign over the period of several days.
Because there is no single location from which one can collect all of the identifying information regarding an aeroplane, it is essential to make use of all of the resources at one’s disposal in order to achieve one’s goals.
You should begin by Googling the things that you are already familiar with and using websites such as Plane Tracking Logger, Airframes, Rzjets, and Antonakis Spotters. Warning: the material on these websites may be out of date or incorrect; therefore, you should always make an effort to validate what you’ve discovered using as many different resources as you can.
A capture from the flight simulator Icarus Flights depicting an aircraft flying from Germany to Uzbekistan
Credit must be given to icarus.flights
A flight from Germany to Uzbekistan was made using an aircraft that belonged to Alisher Usmanov and was operated by Icarus Airlines.
To wrap things up, I was wondering if you’ve ever used Twitter or Telegram. On these websites, there are a number of people that track Plane Tracking as a hobby and report information about the aircraft that they see.
These enthusiasts also frequently upload their photographs to websites dedicated to plane spotting, such as jetphotos.com and planespotters.net. As you follow your aircraft, locations, dates, and times are usually always included, affording you the possibility for gold dust.
The Global Investigative Journalism Network has created a comprehensive tutorial for beginners that includes more specific explainers on how to track Plane Tracking yourself.
How exactly does plane tracking for the media operate in the real world?
This is a good example to follow.
An important document was obtained by OCCRP reporters while they were investigating the fortune of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the former President of Kazakhstan.
It was said there that the Nursultan Nazarbayev Foundation, which is a charitable organisation, had been granted an exemption from Kazakhstan’s import rules in order to purchase a brand-new Airbus ACJ320neo. The luxury aircraft had a value of over one hundred million dollars.
We had reason to believe that Nazarbayev himself was the one who flew the aircraft, as it was a part of a large bank of assets that were ostensibly owned by charity institutions but were actually benefiting the ruler. But we had to show that it was true.
Researchers were able to focus in on the specific Plane Tracking by using Icarus Flights, which allows you to filter by plane type as well as take-off and landing location. All that was needed was the import date and the type of plane that was indicated on the paper. As it turns out, since June of 2020, there has only been one Airbus ACJ320neo travelling around Kazakhstan’s airspace.
The ‘hex code’ of the Plane Tracking Mode-S signal revealed, upon additional investigation, that the aircraft had been re-registered in Kazakhstan about the same time that it was brought into the country.
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev
Image courtesy of Alamy
On November 3, 2015, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev visited the 10 Downing Street building in London.
Even after the Plane Tracking had been located, there was still a significant amount of work to be done. It was imperative that we identify who was making use of it. Icarus Flights has access to high-quality data, but because it is dependent on sensors that were installed by volunteers, its coverage isn’t always comprehensive. Icarus was only displaying a total of three flights for this particular plane.
Do you remember what we said about the best way to do things? Always verify your information using multiple sources.
In light of this information, our reporters accessed flight data from OpenSkyNetwork, which revealed a significant increase in the number of flights that the aircraft had completed after it was brought into Kazakhstan. This information was the smoking gun of all smoking guns, as it allowed reporters to connect Nazarbayev’s official actions with the three journeys the jet had done, two of which were to Moscow and one of which was within Kazakhstan.
What does it all amount to after it’s all said and done? A recent probe of Nazarbayev’s holdings included the Airbus as a pivotal component of the story.
How may I be of service?
OCCRP needs you!
It is extremely useful to conduct searches on the internet for recent photographs or video footage of oligarchs or other similarly situated individuals arriving at or departing from specific airports. Even better, please give us photographs or videos of oligarchs getting on or off planes. The winner is determined by whether or not the tail number of the Plane Tracking can be seen. By exchanging information, we will be able to build a stronger body of evidence to track down the source of the money no matter where it may take flight.
You would also like to read: MONTENEGRIN GANG’S 2023:USE OF OPEN-SOURCE INTELLIGENCE IN LETHAL OPERATIONS
