Verity Consulting Ltd
- HKGCC Membership No. :
- HKV0146
Private Eye
Hollywood has stereotyped the private detective as a moody, often eccentric ex-policeman who spends most of his time searching for clues or tracking cheating spouses. In reality, most investigation consultancies’ clients are companies who are the victims of a bad deal.
“Depending on the state of the economy, the type and number of cases that we are hired to investigate varies considerably,” said Kelvin Ko, Managing Director of Verity Consulting Ltd, an independent investigation consultancy set up in 2009.“A weakeconomy, for instance, usually sparks a surge in bad debts. Many legal firms refer their clients who are lookingfor missing debtors to us. We can assess the financial status of the debtors, but we don’t collect debts.”
Even when the economy is booming, he added that companies still need the services of aninvestigation consultancy, such as when employees change jobs and need to make sure they didn’t breach their employment contract or disclose trade secrets to their new company.
Many accounting firms, investment banks and legal firmsinvolved in mergers and partnerships obviously want to do their due diligence on clients to make sure there are no skeletons hiding in the closet.
Client base
In civil cases, both the prosecutor and defenselawyers have the responsibility to provide evidence in court. In reality, lawyers do not collect such evidence, but direct their clientsto engage companies like Ko’s to collect evidence that can be used in court, he explained.
“About 30-40%of our clients are referralsfrom legal firms, while another 30-40%percent are insurance firms. The remainder are companies, large and small, that knock on our,” he said.
He also noted a growing trend amongsmall and medium Hong Kong enterprises to use investigation services. “Businesses that are employing mainlanders and investing in the countryneed toensure the integrity of the candidates and its potential partners or service providers in the Mainland,”Ko explained. “Arranging a factory visit is insufficient since the working environment can easily be bogus. The role of an independent undercover investigator is to talk to the factory workers directly when they come out to buy lunch, which givesa clearer idea of whether the factory’s operations and mood of the workforce.”
Professional ethics
Before digging into people’s private lives, Ko’s clients need to produce some evidence of why they want to initiate an investigation. Usually, there must be a relationship between the client and the target, for example, insurance company and its injured client, as well as human resources manager and the job seeker.
“We won’t investigate a companyor person just out of a client’s curiosity. Even when we conduct an employment check, we need to get the candidate’s consent and authorization to make sure we do not violate the privacy law.Moreover, we treat all cases in strict confidence,whether we accept the investigation case or not, or before, during and after the case,” he added.“We have to ensure that the investigation process is legal, thereby leaving no liability to our clients during and after every case.”
Employment requirements
Verity recruits staff from the disciplinary forces. Both police and custom officers usually work as investigators if they join the private sector. Their experience has trained them to have a sixth sense for investigativework,” said Ko, who is a former Royal Hong Kong Police Forceofficer.
He also employsfresh graduates majoringin criminal justiceor information technology. “As we offer support in digital forensic litigation, we need someone who is strong on computer data analysis. Investigators spend 70% of theirtime on the go, so they need to be fit.”
Future plan
Internal corporate governance is one of the keysto Ko’ssuccess.All employees have to work to the high degree of ethics and uncompromising confidentiality. It also needs to ensure its investigators employ ethical tactics to collect intelligence, to ensureclients have no liability.“We must use legal means to collect evidence because it will be presented in court,” he explained.
Since setting up the company three years ago, Konow employs32 staff in Hong Kong and eight in Shenzhen. In the past two and a half years, the company has handled about 2,500 cases, averaging80 to 100 large and small cases every month.
“Now that we have the capacity to accept new cases, we plan to accelerate our marketing efforts in the next three years to raise awareness of risk management,” he said.
