Case study: Due diligence of a British executive revealed that he had been involved in a price-fixing inquiry in the United Kingdom. This did not come up in indexes of regulatory filings, but the executive had counterclaimed when his company sought compensation from him, so a thorough search across multiple databases in the U.K. turned up the relevant suit. This arose after his time at the company, but we searched comprehensively because legal trouble can arise in connection with a job long after a person leaves the company.

Our bill was $3,400.

The key to cracking this case was to search more broadly than many would think to do. It is important to remember that if someone left a company in 2010, problems in that company may not come to light until 2013. Those reports will then look back three or more years, and will encompass the part of the timeline in which your subject was at the company. But, news reports may never make reference to him, even if he was in charge of the company treasury from 2008 to 2010. If he is never charged in court or sanctioned by regulators, it is the investigator who has to make the connection.

In this case, the court proceeding we found came well after the subject had left his company. We needed to search all court records going back 20 years, not just for the period in which he was at the company. It took longer this way, but this was the way we found the critical records for him.