Who is running the world?

Ada Homolova & Johan Schuijt
OpenSanctions

Johan

  • Project lead EveryPolitician and PoliLoom.

Ada

  • Community outreach.

Story time

Patrick Balkany, member of parliament and mayor of Levallois-Perret, at a colloquium on security in Vitrolles

Patrick Balkany

Photo: Dominique Pipet, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Map of Paris and its inner ring, highlighting the commune of Levallois-Perret where Patrick Balkany was mayor

Levallois-Perret

Map: Metropolitan, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

  • In office since 1980ies.
A villa swimming pool lined by trees — an illustrative photo, not the Balkanys' actual villa

Villa Pamplemousse, Saint-Martin

Not the actual villa — for the real pictures see GQ France. Photo: Jjpcondor, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

A luxury villa with a turquoise roof, pool and palm trees — an illustrative photo, not the Balkanys' actual villa

Villa in Marrakech

Not the actual villa — for the real pictures see GQ France. Photo: FBI, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

  • Sentenced in 2019, 2023 and 2026 (appealing)
Illustration of money laundering crossed out with a big red X

EU's Anti-Money-Laundering Directive

Photo: Santeri Viinamäki, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Patrick Balkany, member of parliament and mayor of Levallois-Perret, at a colloquium on security in Vitrolles

Patrick Balkany

Photo: Dominique Pipet, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Panama Papers illustration

Panama Papers

Photo: Fundación Gabo, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

“It was an investigation about elections and candidates on the municipal levels. In most German states there is no central data source … you must contact each municipality, of which there are hundreds.”
“In the end wrote hundreds of mails and sometimes had to fight, because some didn’t want to give away the data…”
“A lot of the data on the municipality level is still not accessible or even digital.”

Not just fraud

  • Public procurement.
  • Conflicts of interest.
  • The revolving door.
  • Asset declarations.
  • …

Who runs the world matters

  • Finance: anti money laundering.
  • Journalists: who to hold accountable.
  • Researchers: how power works.
  • Citizens: a basic right to know.

Today

  1. Who runs the world matters.
  2. Challenges.
  3. Our bet: Wikidata.
  4. Our tool: PoliLoom.
  5. Verify real data.
  6. Discussion.

Get your phones out

Just scan and vote.

Scan to vote

connecting…

0 votes

Trick question: nobody knows.

No complete, up-to-date list of the world's politicians.

Challenges

Where do you draw the line?

0 votes

0 votes

0 votes

0 votes

0 votes

There is no agreed answer.

(We don't have one either.)

Scattered records

  • 193 national parliaments worldwide.
  • 664,000 subnational governments (regions, provinces, municipalities).
  • Some are publishing, but all in their own language and format.

Sources: IPU Parline · World Observatory on Subnational Government

Constant flux

  • 80 national elections in 2026 alone.
  • Regional and local elections (nobody bothers to count).
  • Between elections: appointments, reshuffles, resignations, deaths.

Source: IFES ElectionGuide

Challenges summary

  • Nobody agrees on who counts as a politician.
  • Scattered records.
  • Constant flux.

Nobody can keep this up alone

  • mySociety built EveryPolitician — paused 2019, unsustainable on grant funding.

EveryPolitician, revived

OpenSanctions

  • Commercially sustainable open database.
  • Research resource for civil society, and an anti-corruption tool for industry.

Open Data, Open Source

Developed with the community in the open.

discuss.opensanctions.org

github.com/opensanctions

The goal

Make Wikidata the definitive source on who holds power.

How we get there

  1. Capture the web (evidence archived).
  2. Machines extract candidate facts.
  3. Humans verify.
  4. Confirmed data flows to Wikidata.

That's PoliLoom

  • Shows claims + the source passages.
  • You confirm or reject.
  • Confirmed edits go to Wikidata under your account.

PoliLoom

Starting point: Wikidata

Wikidata Positions ~170,000 imported Locations & countries 258 countries & territories Politicians ~710,000 existing Search index EN Prime minister FR Premier ministre RU Премьер-министр JA 首相 Every position, location and country — searchable in many languages.

Capture the web

Politician Q140089150 Wikipedia articles linked language editions Submitted sources links you add Archived snapshot full snapshot, timestamped Every source is fetched and archived before anything is extracted.

Machines extract

archived page reads language model extracts Member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives “She was a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives … from 2012 to 2016.” verbatim quote American politician “Audrey M. Stevens is an American politician.” verbatim quote No quote, no fact — every candidate fact cites the source verbatim.

Mapping text to Wikidata

extracted text “member of the House of Representatives” hybrid search keywords meaning candidate entities Member of the NH House Q21971205 NH House of Representatives Q… Strafford County Q… No match, no claim The model picks the QID that matches the fact.

Humans decide

you Member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives Q21971205 · 2012 – 2016 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Stevens 1. “American politician Audrey Stevens Member of New Hampshire House of Representatives for Strafford 7” 2. “She was a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives and represented Strafford 7th district.” Accept Reject confirmed Wikidata under your account rejected claim discarded You check the claim against the source — then decide.

Let's do this together

  1. On your laptop, go to loom.everypolitician.org.
  2. Log in with your Wiki account.
  3. Choose languages you speak (and optionally a country).
  4. Verify.

Thank you

You just improved the public record. 👏

We need you

We can build tools. We can't build a community alone.

How you can help

Share the tool

  • Tell your network about EveryPolitician.
  • Academic? Verifying claims makes a great classroom exercise.
  • Bring it to your wiki meetup, edit-a-thon, or hackathon.
  • Know anybody who needs this? Please introduce us!
Get in touch! Tell us what worked and what didn't.

We also need community for feedback.

  • Verifying claims felt… satisfying, or like a chore?
  • Would gamification motivate you — or invite careless approvals?
  • What would make you come back next month?

Get involved!