> Every five minutes a satellite captures images of China’s biggest cities from space. Thousands of miles away in California, a computer looks at the shadows of the buildings in the images and draws a conclusion: China’s real estate boom is slowing.
> Traders at BlackRock, the money management giant, then use the data to help choose whether to buy or sell the stocks of Chinese developers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/business/dealbook/the-nex...
A building on its own is a liability, its only worth something if it has occupants (or property prices are rising)
The World Bank, for example, makes lots of overseas investments in places where it might not be convenient to send representatives to check up on the progress of, say, a factory for which they have funded the construction. They'll receive monthly reports about the factory and how many people it's employing, and when they finally go check up on it, it's just a guard house and a pile of rubble.
Having a fleet of satellites that you can use to monitor your investments will definitely make it much harder to get away with stealing money through this type of fraud.
Perhaps you meant the International Finance Corporation (IFC)?
The World Bank's mandate is primarily to give out loans to developing nations. The IFC is the arm of the World Bank Group that makes investments.