To support journalism as a public good, ImportGenius maintains a trade data research team. We assist journalists and journalism students with requests for trade data by sharing data relevant to their requests at no cost and by providing guidance on navigating the many quirks of the trade data ecosystem. Additionally, we perform our own research and offer stories we identify in our data.
The data we provide to journalists is sourced from the data sets we make commercially available plus a number of niche data sets we’ve collected. In recent weeks, ImportGenius’ Russian customs data has contributed to investigations conducted by numerous organizations, including WSJ and CNN. Our Russian customs data is collated by secondary sources from official Russian customs and shipment records.
POLITICO contacted us and requested any Russian customs data we had relevant to a number of entities and HS codes. The data we provided in response to that request included the shipments of body armor and CQ-A rifles mentioned in Thursday’s reporting.
ImportGenius stands by the accuracy of our data. In the interest of transparency, and in response to requests we’ve received today, we’ve decided to publicly release the shipping records we provided to POLITICO corresponding to the CQ-A and body armor shipments. The CQ-A shipment is currently available in the Russian customs database accessible through this website. The body armor shipments are part of a data set which we have not yet made commercially available. Please see the data below, and feel free to email media@importgenius.com if you have any questions.