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Integrity due diligence

Integrity Due Diligence Leading the way in due diligence

Giving our clients the confidence to work with new partners in any market.

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We conduct integrity due diligence for clients across multiple sectors to help mitigate risks from new commercial relationships and to inform their strategic decision-making.

Clients turn to us when they need independent investigation and thorough analysis of the reputational and regulatory risks associated with their business partners.

We provide clients with the information they need to make key commercial decisions. Our in-house specialists often have expert due diligence backgrounds, and an excellent working knowledge of FCPA compliance, UK Bribery Act compliance and other national counter-bribery legislation. Endorsed with top rankings in Chambers Litigation Support Guide 2020.

BENEFITS

Clients who partner with us benefit from our:

Outstanding expertise – We have one of the largest, most experienced and best-trained integrity due diligence teams in the world.
Global reach – Our multi-lingual teams have conducted assignments on more than 10,000 subjects in over 150 countries, and we’re committed to maintaining and constantly evolving our global network.
Flexible approach – Our service is flexible and can apply different levels of scrutiny to the subjects of our assignments, according to client needs and the nature of the project.

Risk Advisory understands how political dynamics and risks have changed in particular countries. It is so much more than just mining some databases for information- it's understanding the landscape extremely well and how everything fits together so you really get that comprehensive feedback.

- Attorney at a Washington DC law firm

We give Risk Advisory our most complicated stuff, our most serious allegations, the stuff that’s going to take the hardest to get to the bottom of. Then they’re pretty much always engaged.

- Head of compliance at multinational biopharma company

Always practical and thorough, Risk Advisory has been invaluable in helping us assess risks around counterparties and senior hires, particularly in Russia.

- General counsel at a global soft drinks company

They’re our go-to firm for global business intelligence requirements. Not only do we ask them for help on our matters but we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to our clients, and have done on various occasions.

- Chambers Litigation Support Guide 2020, client quote

Key features of our integrity due diligence service include:

Vendor due diligence and M&A due diligence on new commercial relationships, JV partners, acquisition targets, agents and distributors
Compliance due diligence – e.g., FCPA compliance, UK Bribery Act compliance and other national counter-bribery legislation
Compliance with the OFAC and other sanction controls
Due diligence investigation on third-party suppliers, agents or distributors
In-depth investigations ahead of mergers, acquisitions and joint venture formation
Pre-IPO background checks
Research into recipients of proposed equity investments or loans
Enhanced due diligence during the client on-boarding process
Help with document review, risk rating, and programme audit
Training for in-house due diligence staff

Reconstructing bribery allegations

A Risk Advisory client was in negotiations to acquire a rival healthcare business, which relied on a third party sales agent model. Concerned by potential successor liability risks, our client tasked us to investigate its rival's agents to help its integrity due diligence endeavours.

On the back of that brief, we reconstructed the background and track record of each agent, relying on a range of data sources, as well as insights from our own human intelligence network. We looked specifically at how and where the agents made use of political relationships, gifts and hospitality, to see whether corrupt practices were part of their modus operandi. Ten had a track record of making sales to state-run healthcare bodies with the aid of high-level political connections. In four cases, we heard credible claims of bribery from contacts of ours who had witnessed first-hand the sales agents at work.

Unravelling beneficial ownership

Our client discovered that the ownership of its main distributor in Kazakhstan had changed: several new Cypriot-registered entities were now involved. By talking to senior figures in the Kazakh power industry and contacts close to law enforcement there, we helped our client to identify their beneficial owners.

Behind the scenes, Risk Advisory scrutinised company records and hundreds of other data points to see if any of the new shareholders had connections to other companies in the former Soviet Union. It turned out that they did, and we were able to confirm that the new shareholders were linked to senior managers of one of Kazakhstan’s largest, partially state-owned gas producers.