By U.S. data analytics firm Sayari said on Thursday it has partnered with Dutch investigations specialist DataExpert to supply artificial intelligence tools for tracking financial crime to government agencies in eight European countries.
The agreement will give law enforcement, defence and financial intelligence agencies in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden access to Sayari’s data platform, which is designed to trace money, ownership and trade links across borders, the companies said in a statement.
DataExpert, which provides cybercrime, fraud and digital-investigation services to government and law enforcement clients across Europe, will handle implementation, staff training and in-country support for agencies adopting the technology.
European governments are setting up new institutions to combat money laundering and sanctions evasion, including a European Union anti-money laundering authority, as cross-border financial crime becomes a bigger focus for regulators.
Sayari said its technology is built to comply with the EU AI Act, which sets rules for how artificial intelligence systems can be used, including by public authorities, and requires that high-risk AI tools meet standards for transparency and human oversight.
The Sayari platform can be deployed within a government’s own computing environment, including a private or classified cloud, rather than relying on external servers, the company said.
It said its AI models are trained on its own data rather than on information supplied by clients, and that every result generated by the system is linked back to a source document, with final decisions left to a human analyst.
The system draws on what Sayari describes as more than 12 billion records collected from more than 250 jurisdictions, covering corporate ownership, trade and financial data compiled over 12 years.
Sayari said agencies using the platform through DataExpert would apply it to investigations including cross-border money laundering networks, export-control enforcement for goods with military and civilian uses, and the mapping of sanctions evasion schemes that rely on layered corporate structures.
The companies also cited beneficial ownership verification, screening of foreign investment under a new EU regulation on foreign direct investment, and assessments of defence supply-chain risk tied to foreign ownership or control as areas of use.
“European agencies are being asked to confront cross-border financial crime, sanctions evasion, and dual-use proliferation at a pace their current tooling was never designed for,” said Gino Flem, DataExpert’s managing director for the Benelux region, in the statement.
Farley Mesko, Sayari’s chief executive, said European governments were moving quickly to adopt what the industry calls “sovereign” AI systems – tools that can be run and controlled within a country’s own infrastructure rather than through third-party cloud services.
He said the region’s governments would “only adopt AI they can control, audit, and defend in court.”
Sayari, which is based in Washington, said it already works with large financial institutions, multinational companies and some government bodies in Europe, as well as with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Britain’s tax authority, HM Revenue & Customs.
The company said its technology is used by professionals in more than 35 countries to screen supply chains and identify sanctions and forced-labor risks.
DataExpert, based in Veenendaal, Netherlands, says it specializes in open-source intelligence, digital forensics, data analytics and cybersecurity services for government, law enforcement and corporate clients, offering onboarding, implementation and training alongside its technology partnerships.
Financial crime enforcement has become a bigger priority in the EU following a series of money-laundering scandals at European banks over the past decade, which prompted the bloc to centralize oversight through a new Frankfurt-based anti-money laundering authority, AMLA, which began ramping up operations in 2025.
DataExpert and Sayari are scheduled to host a webinar on Sept. 1 focused on tracing money-laundering networks linked to Chinese organized crime groups operating between Southeast Asia and Europe, according to the statement.
