Private detective. Wiretap. Spying.

[Матушкин Андрей Николаевич]

Re: Hunters for traitors Thank you!

 

[Частный детектив. Дмитрий Викторчик. Беларусь. Мин]

Private detective in Belarus
The investigation is conducted by leftists.

Anna TOLKACH, newspaper "Republic"

Private investigation in the country is illegal, but you can easily find a detective

In Belarus, their illegal Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot are not uncommon. On the Internet, at least you can find dozens of ads. Another thing is that on the sites most often there are no detective coordinates, except for email - a complete conspiracy. I decided to check who works in this area and what rates are now set. I am writing to five private detectives about the same letter. Like, a wedding is coming in the summer, and the groom began to behave very suspiciously: he returns late from work, receives suspicious SMS ...

Three hours later, the call.

- My name is Dmitry. I suggest meeting in an hour.
A middle-aged man came to the meeting with a leather briefcase under his arm. We walked to the nearest cafe.
The detective asked for a long time about my "groom", trying to make his psychological portrait.
- When you walk around the city together, he looks at other girls, flirts with someone?
- Have not noticed…
The detective shakes his head sympathetically.
“I can follow him.” You only have his car number. Enough verbal portrait. Photo and video, if necessary, I will provide.
- And what if he has a bug in his shirt?
“You've seen enough of detectives,” Dmitry smiled indulgently. - Put a "bug" - and you need to be around him all the time to catch a signal. This method does not suit us.
The detective estimated an hour of work at $ 10 if he doesn’t move around the city, but, let’s say, he is waiting for the groom at the entrance door, 15 if he’s going. Shooting is included. For $ 15, Dmitry promised to determine by any number, mobile or landline, its owner. However, the detective did not impose his services. Dmitry turned out to be an excellent psychologist and asked me to think a hundred times before agreeing.

I called the next private investigator myself. But he refused to communicate face to face.
“I'll see you only when you bring a photo of the person to be tracked, and, in fact, a guarantee,” Yuri set the conditions. - Payment is this: 200 thousand per day or we will stipulate the price for all work before exposure. Then the estimated cost is one million to one million two hundred.

The number of another detective, Ivan, my mobile, of course, did not determine. A man came to the meeting, somewhat reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes. Classic plaid coat, cap, only the tube is missing.
The conversation went according to the well-known scenario. Ivan, however, can not only follow the "groom", but also eavesdrop on his conversation with a stranger, say, in a cafe.
- I walk past his table, stumble, grab the tablecloth, set the bug and listen. Everything is simple, - the private detective explains.
- And how will you take pictures? In a small cafe, you can’t just get a camera ...
- With the modern quality of photographs taken from a mobile phone, it is not necessary to carry a camera with you. Again, I'm sitting in a cafe, pretending to call someone. A hand with a pipe catches the desired angle - and the photo is ready.
Ivan estimated his services at $ 30 per hour of surveillance. The price includes the cost of gasoline, visiting all the entertainment venues next to the object, photo and video shooting.
“I can hack email, I don’t promise to wiretap the phone, but I’ll try,” Ivan went into details. - We have a private investigation outside the law, so many working methods are not available.

Private detectives promise to track the husband or wife, to find out how the child spends free time, to find the missing relative or friend. Detectives appear in advertisements as professional psychologists and former law enforcement officials. How legal is all this?
- Licenses for detective activities in our country are not issued. A policeman who “moonlights” as a private detective can easily lose his job if it turns out that he is listening to someone else’s phone, ”Anatoly Semin, deputy head of the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology of the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus told me at the meeting. - Moreover, the private detectives you dealt with are inclined to violate at least two articles of the Criminal Code: No. 179 “Illegal collection or dissemination of information about private life” and No. 203 “Violation of the secrecy of correspondence, telephone conversations and other communications of citizens”.
The sanctions of the articles imply a very real punishment. If a person who was being followed was in trouble: his wife left him, he was fired from his job after some personal information became known, he may well sue the offender. The detective, however, will not be punished very severely - with community service, a fine or arrest for up to six months. If he also used special means (from binoculars to bugs) when collecting information, then he can be imprisoned for three years. About the same punishment “shines” for those who like to read other people's letters and listen to conversations. Another thing is that proving interference in personal life is not easy. Last year, under Article 179, no one was convicted; one case was dismissed. According to the 203rd, only one passed, by which a person was acquitted.

In my opinion, private detectives can really help out in some life situation: they will find a friend with whom they lost contact, they will check how honest the companion is. After all, you will not go to the police with every personal request, and detectives could become good helpers even in those cases where they do not violate the Criminal Code.

 

[Матушкин Андрей Николаевич]

Re: The investigation is conducted by leftists.

Dmitry, thank you. Very interesting.

 

[Частный детектив. Дмитрий Викторчик. Беларусь. Мин]

Re: Left-wing investigators are conducting an investigation. So in Belarus, the issue of private investigations periodically "pops up" in the official media. Naturally, there is always a demand; there are also proposals, as can be seen from the article. But, to a critical mass, such as in Ukraine, is still far away. Will have to continue to work in the form of a "leftist". After all, you cannot call yourself a private detective, because this type of activity has not been in the national classifier of types of economic activity since 1999.

 

[Матушкин Андрей Николаевич]

Re: The leftists are conducting the investigation. I can only sympathize.

 

[Объединенное Детективное Бюро]

I will give the debtor into private hands The Federal Service of Bailiffs intends to involve private companies in the search for debtors. Now the FSSP is exploring such an opportunity, said the head of the department, Arthur Parfenchikov, while in Petersburg. It is clear that cooperation should be based on mutually beneficial conditions. How much it can cost the state, Fontanka tried to find out. Work with detectives, according to Arthur Parfenchikov, will help create a symbiosis of private and state execution of punishment in Russia. And collection agencies, for which Parfenchikov also advocates, will be able to create a professional system of seekers: they will be able to independently hire lawyers, notaries and detectives. The fact that if this initiative is implemented, private traders will gain access to departmental databases, the bailiffs, apparently, are not scary. Parfenchikov did not explain how the system for attracting private agents to the work of the FSSP will function, however, he emphasized that he “stands for the development of the collection services market”. The head of the Ministry of Justice, Alexander Konovalov, in turn, said that together with the Ministry of Finance, a bill is being developed regarding the so-called private factoring, that is, the redemption of debts from legal entities by private entities. “This is a normal practice that exists in many countries,” he stressed. Leaving aside the issues of transfer of debts, Fontanka became interested in the rates for the services of private detectives, which can be involved in cooperation with bailiffs. "The search for hiding debtors, fraudsters" is estimated by detectives as "the most difficult and financially costly measure, since the villains who committed the crime try not to leave traces of the crime." The cost of search events in St. Petersburg varies from 4 to 120 thousand rubles, the average price of 2 thousand dollars. The Fontanka correspondent phoned several detective agencies asking for help in finding an unscrupulous companion who, "according to legend," disappeared with money for business development. We provided the detectives with their last name, first name, patronymic, and place of registration. For 4 thousand rubles, detectives from the private investigation bureau Infoproverka are ready to provide information on the debtor's place of residence and his home phone number. Detectives promise to do the job within 24 hours. Private detective Nechaev S.A., after listening carefully to the heart-breaking story about a bad partner, requested at least 15 thousand rubles. “We have to break through to the address,” the detective explained, taking a deep breath. “For 100-120 thousand rubles, we are ready to inform you of the actual whereabouts of the person you are looking for,” the RazVedka agency readily answered. In the well-known detective bureau "Russia", which operates in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the United States, they promise to find the "wanted person" for 100 thousand rubles within two weeks. To create the “visibility” of searches - to break through the database, find some information - they are ready there for 30 thousand rubles. The bureau says that during the crisis, appeals to search for dishonest debtors became more frequent. According to Fontanka, an employee of Russia, Andrei Volkov, every day he is contacted by 2-3 clients who have suffered from the actions of villains whose traces have gone cold after they have seized huge amounts, often reaching several million dollars. “Tricky businessmen during the crisis period specially raised huge amounts, then to freeze all projects and say:“ Oh, crisis! I can’t repay the debt, ”Volkov describes the“ entrepreneurial ”scheme. The detective, meanwhile, negatively assesses Parfenchikov’s initiative, emphasizing that “it is of a mutually unfavorable nature.” “We have high rates. We are not interested. The state itself perfectly copes with this task. When necessary, they will find whoever you want. It is necessary to block debtors' access to all accounts, freeze rights, and not let them go abroad, because those who travel abroad, of course, can pay off their debts. Well, with respect to those who are sitting at home, it’s pointless to take some radical measures, ”says Volkov. “With regard to the services of collection agencies, the additional costs of executive actions should be borne by the FSSP, an attempt to put the costs on the debtor is not legal,” said Ivan Smirnov, lawyer at Baker & McKenzie. “From a legal point of view, involving a private detective in the search the debtor is not a violation, but the law on enforcement proceedings does not provide for this possibility, clearly limiting the circle of persons who are participants in the relevant enforcement actions. The Federal Law "On Enforcement Proceedings" provides that only the bailiffs or the internal affairs bodies can search for a debtor or its property. Therefore, the introduction of such practice requires appropriate changes in the law. " As an example of a change in legislation, the lawyer cited a situation with a restriction on the departure of debtors when amendments were made to the Federal Law "On Enforcement Proceedings" (Article 64). Changing lines in the law and adjusting budget lines are not the same thing. And, presumably, before legitimizing the cooperation of private structures and the federal service, public men will weigh and calculate everything. A hypothetical analysis of the market for detective services conducted by Fontanka only shows what costs can be discussed if the number of enforcement proceedings in St. Petersburg alone reaches more than half a million. Alexandra Garmazhapova, Fontanka.ru

 

[Матушкин Андрей Николаевич]

Re: I will give the debtor in private hands Thank you!

 

[Объединенное Детективное Бюро]

Detective Agency Kroll
Not a lot of history ...

POLINA GORDEEVA, ALEXANDER IZYUMOV
In 1998, the Sudanese businessman Saleh Idris needed help. He needed to restore his good name and return the millions of dollars lying on accounts in American banks, which were frozen by order of the US government. The Americans owned his pharmaceutical factory in Sudan as a chemical weapons factory and destroyed it. Washington himself considered Idris himself an accomplice of Osama bin Laden. Idris turned to the only company that could help him and whose opinion was listened to in the United States - the detective agency Kroll. His staff investigated and proved that the allegations by the US authorities were unfounded. Idris regained both his good name and money.

After the terrorists' first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York in 1993, its owners asked Kroll to protect the center. Agency experts provided such a level of protection that terrorists could overcome only in the air. And even in this case, according to the authorities, the agency managed to ensure the evacuation of most of the people who worked in WTC before the towers fell.

According to one Wall Street financier, whenever a company, bank, government agency, or even a private person needs help investigating a crime, the first thing they do is call the Kroll office: “They have gained a reputation as an agency that can do almost anything. a crime has been committed in the world, they will reveal it, or, conversely, they are able to prove that the crime is not committed, even if there is every reason to believe otherwise. Finally, Kroll is able to find any money, no matter how well it is hidden. If Kroll is not found money, which means that this money simply never existed in nature. "

Fighter for justice
Jules Kroll, founder of Kroll Inc., likes to say that the superheroes Spiderman and Hulk made him rich, as well as a deep sense of disgust for injustice. If this is a joke, then only partly. The first client of his agency, which was originally called J. Kroll Associates, was the parent company of the publisher Marvel Comics, which became famous just for the comic books about Spiderman and the Hulk. Well, the desire to fight injustice with Kroll appeared in childhood.


Detective agency protection afforded by World Trade Center leaves terrorists free to attack from the air
Jules Kroll was born in Brooklyn in 1941. His father owned a small printing house, his mother was a housewife. One of Kroll’s most vivid childhood memories is his father’s meeting with buyers, almost all of whom, in exchange for concluding a contract, demanded a rollback from Kroll Sr. “It was just disgusting, you can’t imagine how angry I was,” he said in an interview with The New Yorker magazine.

The desire to fight injustice helped Jules to choose a profession: he decided to become a lawyer. Kroll perfectly graduated from Georgetown University and got a job in the Office of the Manhattan District Attorney, where he quickly rose to the position of Deputy District Attorney. Kroll was waiting for a brilliant career (he managed to work with many politicians and lawyers, including Robert Kennedy), but he soon had to leave work: Kroll's father was seriously ill, and he had to take a vacation at his own expense to start a family business. He devoted the printing business to the year - according to him, it was the most boring and joyless time in life. But it was then that Kroll came up with the idea to open his own business - a detective agency. But not one that would guard or spy on unfaithful husbands and wives, but that would provide services to companies that have become targets for various extortionists.

From superheroes to supervillains
In 1972, Jules Kroll registered his company and received a private detective license. He began with the publishing business: he began to go around one publisher after another. He knew in connection with which types of fraud publishing houses and printing houses were losing money, starting with bribes and ending with all kinds of postscripts, and offered his services to return these funds. He did not ask for a fee or payment of his expenses - only a certain percentage of the amount returned. The first client was just Curtis Publishing Company, the owner of Marvel Comics.


Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier greatly facilitated the work of detectives, leaving receipts from their luxurious purchases in a prominent place
Kroll's clientele was expanding; more and more large firms turned to him for help. Jules Kroll has a reputation of a person who is able to return money without noise and scandal. This was liked not only by printing houses, but also by financial and insurance companies, which increasingly entrusted him with tasks.

The amounts returned by J. Kroll Associates were getting bigger, which means the company itself was getting higher fees. Kroll recruited retired accountants from large companies, operations officers from the world's leading intelligence agencies, from Mossad and the CIA to the FBI and MI5. In addition, experienced attorneys, prosecutors, auditors, and, of course, private detectives could always count on work in the company.

By the mid-1980s, the reputation of J. Kroll Associates was already so strong that the American state turned to the agency for help. In 1985, the US House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee hired an agency to confirm or deny information that former Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda stole more than $ 200 million from the state treasury. Kroll agents found the money without any problems. And the very next year, with the same task - to find the money of the escaped dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier - the Haitian government turned to the agency. This money, later recalled by Jules Kroll, was even easier to find. The dictator, according to him, did not shine with his mind. He simply wrote out checks, which were very easy to find. For example, Duvalier bought an apartment in Trump Tower. “Even we could not miss this building,” Jules Kroll said in an interview.

Kroll's next target was Saddam Hussein. The agency took up the search for his money hidden in banks in the USA and Europe at the request of the government of Kuwait. It sought the confiscation of Saddam's assets as compensation for damage caused by the Iraqi invasion and short-term occupation of Kuwait. Kroll discovered this money. True, I had to work hard here. Helped communications in financial companies and special services. "We made the most, say, weird requests, but the person to whom we returned several tens of millions, of course, felt obligated to help us," said one of the agency’s former employees.

Empire of Kroll
By the beginning of the 1990s, Kroll's company had representative offices in ten countries of the world, and its clients included the world's leading financial companies, governments and state bodies. Jules Kroll was and remains a liberal, but his agency was quite ready to tackle a matter for which the liberals would not have praised him. For example, thanks to Kroll's investigation, information contained in one of CNN's documentaries was refuted. In it, the US military was accused of using chemical weapons in Laos.


Search and confiscation of funds accumulated by world dictators is one of the main activities of Kroll
Be that as it may, by this time the company was already so strong that it was ready to fight the mafia. In New York, on behalf of the local authorities, Kroll's agents conducted an operation that yielded incontrovertible evidence of the almost total control of the Gambino mafia clan over freight traffic in New York. In general, former Kroll employees say, quite often it happened that the agency worked with cases for which, for one reason or another, the official law enforcement agencies did not want to take on. This was the case with the famous case of the Italian banker Roberto Calvi. He was found hanged in London in 1982. For a long time, despite many circumstantial evidence, the police refused to initiate a criminal investigation into the death of a banker. The Calvi family turned to Kroll, who had been involved in this business for three years - from 1991 to 1994. The result was not only evidence that the banker was killed, but also a scandal that shook Italy. Leading politicians, financiers, and the Vatican were involved in it. The fact that Calvi’s killers were never punished is not the agency’s fault - this is an obvious consequence of the then unwillingness of the Italian authorities to bring the matter to an end.

Something similar happened after the agency was hired by the Russian government to discover secret accounts of the CPSU abroad and to find out ways of capital flight from Russia. As one of the former employees of the agency Tommy Helsby later said, from the very beginning it was obvious that the task was given rather for averting eyes. For Russia, in his opinion, it was important to show creditors that it was serious about the problem of capital flight. “The fact that they hired us by announcing this at a press conference should have made it clear that this is not serious,” said Helsby. “They got their loan from the IMF, which, in my opinion, was for which they all started it. We dug up a lot of information, but it turned out that they did not need it. And they did not even pay us. " Nevertheless, the fact that the agency was not afraid to investigate the mafia or the KGB suggests that it was completely self-confident.

Absolutely everything has stopped doubting Kroll’s strength after the enormous scandal with the collapse of the American energy giant Enron Inc. The company went bankrupt after it turned out that for many years it was cheating on its own shareholders, inflating its profits. The matter of withdrawing the company from bankruptcy (and searching for money from creditors and shareholders) was entrusted to Kroll, who had by then become an active player in the field of restructuring bankrupt companies.

Kroll's mistakes
Nevertheless, the fact that the agency, despite more than efficient operation and expanding staff, remained under the control of a single person for a long time - Jules Kroll - objectively began to harm business.

Partly thanks to Imelda Marcos, wife of the president of the Philippines, Kroll received the first order from the US government
Kroll made the biggest mistakes precisely as a businessman. He began to search for new areas of activity. They were more successful, but expansion required new funds, and this could only be achieved by attracting professional investors or merging with other companies operating in the same market. Kroll decided to do both. In 1997, J. Kroll Associates announced a merger with another security services company, O`Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt. The new company - Kroll-O`Gara Company - became public. Its shares began to be traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange. The alliance was unsuccessful. Jules Kroll thought only of investigations, his colleagues and partners - brothers Bill and Thomas O`Gara, who were mainly involved in security and the production of special vehicles - had a completely different view of the company's development. The idea of creating a company that would do detective work and advise clients on financial security issues (Kroll direction) and at the same time provide security services (O`Gara direction) did not work out. It did not help that thanks to new funds from investors, the alliance was able to buy a lot of companies, fantastically expanding the range of services provided. In 2001, the O`Gar brothers, finally quarreling with Kroll, achieved the design of their unit in a separate company. Kroll's agency, in which he was no longer the sovereign owner, became known as Kroll Inc. In 2004, it was bought for $ 1.9 billion by the current owner - the insurance company Marsh & McLennan Companies (MMS). That MMC is now selling the agency for $ 1.13 billion, believing that it is better for her to concentrate on her main activity - insurance.

Partially, however, the decision to part with Kroll appeared with its owner also because many of the company's operations have recently been obviously unsuccessful, and sometimes scandalous. Kroll made a name and a reputation for himself carefully observing secrecy and effectiveness, and most importantly, for the impeccability of his conclusions. Scandals, even caused by the actions of others, of course, did not help the company. And the cases when the agency’s work was ineffective or it made erroneous conclusions undermined the company's reputation even more.

One of the biggest scandals of recent times was the story associated with the execution of Kroll Inc. assignments of the Brazilian telecommunications company Brasil Telecom. The Brazilians hired an agency to find out if one of the company's shareholders is going to absorb it. During the investigation, Kroll agents were arrested by the Brazilian police and the agency’s office in São Paulo was ransacked. The Brazilian authorities accused the company of illegally tapping private telephone calls, intercepting e-mails and bribing officials. As a result, the agency had to stop the investigation.

However, these events were almost force majeure. The agency is still confident that the police who searched the Kroll offices themselves were bribed by those against whom the investigation was being conducted. The reputation of the company was much worse after it was asked to investigate the activities of the famous Anglo-American financier Allen Stanford. For many years, charges have been raised against him for helping to launder drug mafia money, deceiving his own investors by creating a financial pyramid, and evading taxes. One of Stanford’s clients hired Jules Kroll’s agency to find out if there is any truth to the allegations. Kroll Inc. conducted an investigation and cheerfully reported to the client that Stanford was innocent. A year later, the US federal authorities, having collected the necessary evidence to the contrary, charged Stanford with both money laundering and the creation of a financial pyramid. Moreover, it turned out that for a long time Stanford was a client of Kroll Inc. Stanford is now in prison awaiting trial, at least one detective agency employee has been fired, and the agency’s reputation has been tarnished by allegations that it may have falsified the findings in order to please an old client. Removing this charge is difficult even after Kroll representatives said they had resolved their problems with the defrauded client to everyone’s satisfaction.

All this ultimately led to the fact that the current owner of the agency sells it at a loss. The customer is perhaps Kroll’s largest competitor: Altegrity, an American company. The sale transaction has not yet been completed, and when this happens, the undisputed leader in the market of corporate investigations and risk management will appear in the world. Nevertheless, there are doubts that the new company will decide to maintain the autonomy that Kroll used even within the MMC. Of course, the owners would rather rename their company to Kroll than to let the most famous brand in this market disappear. But, according to many experts, the former uniqueness of the detective agency Kroll can be forgotten.

[DLMURL="https://www.kommersant.ru/"] Publishing house Kommersant [/DLMURL]

 

[Матушкин Андрей Николаевич]

Re: The house that Kroll built Thank you!

 

[Объединенное Детективное Бюро]

Any whim for your money

In principle, this is possible, but only if it does not violate the privacy of a private person. Murmansk opened a criminal case against a private security detective agency. They conducted their activities with the help of special technical means, which is strictly prohibited by law. The equipment was installed in one of the hotels in Murmansk. This was reported today in the investigative committee at the Russian prosecutor's office in the Murmansk region.


So far, the investigation does not disclose either the name of the company or the names of the defendants. It is only known that there are three attackers. And all of them are very familiar with the specifics of conducting operational-search activities, and some - well, just "kulibins" - are masters in the manufacture of special technical equipment.


The constitutional rights of citizens were violated. People did not know that in this household item there is a special tool that records personal life, telephone conversations.


This supposedly TV was installed in one of the hotels in the city of Murmansk. All the details: microphones, camera, writing devices, these craftsmen purchased in a regular store.


In the near future, three defendants in this criminal case will be charged. The punishment provided for by the criminal code for violating privacy (Article 137) is up to three years in prison with a restriction on the right to engage in detective work.

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