How Open Source Centre accessed Russian financial records in a closed internet environment
Open Source Centre recently published The Big Shor — an investigation into A7, a Russian state-backed network alleged to have moved tens of billions of dollars through the international financial system in circumvention of Western sanctions.
To investigate and trace financial flows across Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Hong Kong and beyond, the team needed access to sources that simply aren't reachable via commercial VPN and proxy services. Conventional access to key information such as court filings, public registries and other valuable documents were often blocked at the network level.
Here is what they told us about using Skylight in the field.
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"Skylight's network of IPs has allowed us to access content and data sources as if we were based in-country. In an increasingly monitored and protected internet environment, this is essential in many operations where data centre IPs are blocked and restricted.
Skylight's capabilities continue to prove essential in the retrieval of official government records in restricted environments, including Russian court documents usually blocked on non-residential IPs. This experience is equally mirrored for other restricted internet operations.
Connection to the SkylightMobile module has provided peace-of-mind remote operation of mobile devices. This means we do not need to worry about location-based leaks of our operational location, while being able to access a wide range of services only available via mobile verification."
Open Source Centre
The Big Shor investigation · June 2026
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Read the investigation
Open Source Centre · opensourcecentre.org
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