Kroll Inc.

Kroll Inc.   (Intelligence agency)
Formation	1972
Founder	Jules B. Kroll
Headquarters	New York
Type	•  commercial •  espionage
Staff	2,800
Interest of	Richard Grove
The “CIA of Wall Street”

Kroll is a global risk consulting company headquartered in New York. Founded by Jules Kroll in 1972, Kroll Associates would later become known as the “CIA of Wall Street” and “Wall Street’s Private Eye” and was alleged to be an actual front for the CIA by French intelligence agencies, according to Washington Post.

History

In 2002, Kroll acquired Kelly McCann's firm Crucible Security Services. McCann became a Senior Vice President of Kroll's security services and training departments.

Since its founding in 1972 by Jules B. Kroll, the company has expanded beyond private investigation and security services into all areas of corporate risk mitigation including background screening, business intelligence, forensic accounting, electronic discovery, and data recovery, among others. It was a subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan until August 2010 when it was acquired by Altegrity, Inc., principally owned by Providence Equity Partners.

Kroll was itself acquired by professional services firm Marsh & McLennan Companies in July 2004. Lead on the Marsh side as chairman and CEO was Jeffrey W. Greenberg, the son of American International Group (AIG) CEO Maurice R. Greenberg, but he had to resign from his posts at Marsh on October 25, 2004 in favour of Michael G. Cherkasky, who was formerly with Kroll.

In March of 2004, Kroll hired co-founder of Defence Systems Limited, Alastair Morrison, to lead a new subsidiary, Kroll Security International Inc., based out of Kroll's Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) regional headquarters in London. They will assume responsibility for overseeing the Iraq assignments, global kidnap for ransom, as well as the security services work conducted in Latin America and the Asia-Pacific. [1]

Kroll is a member of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq.

Notable Cases

1987 - The Heroin Trail case

In 1987, in the prominent First Amendment case over The Heroin Trail stories in New York Newsday, attorney Floyd Abrams enlisted Kroll's help to find an eyewitness:

"But was it conceivable that we could come up with an eyewitness who could be of help? I called Jules Kroll, the CEO of Kroll Associates, the nation's most acclaimed investigative firm, to ask him if he could inquire, through the extensive range of former law enforcement officials employed by him, whether Karaduman was known to be a drug trafficker in Istanbul."

Kroll delivered: two weeks into the trial the firm produced Faraculah Arras, who was prepared to testify he was involved in one of Karaduman's drug deals. "I was stunned," recalled Abrams.

Abrams used Kroll again in 1998 to investigate claims by CNN's Newstand documentary that sarin nerve gas had been used in Vietnam in 1970 as part of Operation Tailwind.

1991 - The Death of Roberto Calvi

Roberto Calvi's family chose Kroll to investigate the circumstances of his death.

1992 Dossier Crillon

In 1992, Spanish minister Narcis Serra hired in Kroll to dig up dirt on banker Mario Conde.

1993 - WTC & Sears Tower security

Kroll were responsible for revamping security at the World Trade Center after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, an operation led by Brian Michael Jenkins. Kroll also took on responsibility for security at Chicago's Sears Tower following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

2004 - The Death of Richard Chang

Richard Chang was a senior Risk Business analyst whom Abbey National employed in their City of London HQ. He was happily married and had two teenage kids. On 13th July 2004 when he fell to his death from a 5th Floor window of the Abbey National HQ Building.

Kroll had been instructed^[When?] by Abbey National to discover the authorship of an anonymous document distributed to senior directors of the company which alleged financial corruption, fraud and sexual impropriety. The document related to appointments Abbey's management made of the Buttonwood Tree Consultants. During the course of the Kroll investigation, Richard was subjected to interrogations by Kroll staff and secretly taped with legal representative present. During a 2½ hour interrogation session, Richard is said to have requested a toilet break during which he jumped to his death.

The tape of the interrogation session was not given to the police until 3 weeks after the death and Richard's family believe it may have been edited in the meantime. The coroner did not allow it to be played at the inquest. The family are dubious about the City of London police investigation, the post-mortem examination and the coroner's inquest.

The lead Kroll investigator on the Abbey National investigation was Howard Jones, a former Metropolitan Police detective superintendent. The pathologist who carried out the post-mortem was Dr Freddie Patel, who did not attend the inquest.

2004 - Spying

In October 2004, police raided the Brazil offices of Kroll Inc. Federal police stated the raids were in connection with Kroll's investigation of dairy firm Parmalat. Kroll suggested the raids were related to its investigation into Telecom Italia on behalf of its client Brasil Telecom. Telecom Italia offices in Brazil and Italy were raided as well and some members of its Tiger Team were arrested for international espionage to highlight the counterintelligence performed against Kroll. Previously, Brazilian daily Folha de S. Paulo claimed Kroll spied on Presidential adviser Luiz Gushiken, a claim denied by the firm.

Other products - Identity Theft Shield

Kroll entered into a joint marketing agreement with legal service plan provider Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. in 2003, to distribute an identity theft product to consumers, called the Identity Theft Shield, the first time Kroll offered a service to individuals. As of June 30, 2006, Kroll had over 560,000 customers, according to Pre-Paid Legal's quarterly report. In addition to the Pre-Paid Legal subscribers, Kroll's Identity Theft Shield serves about 500,000 other consumers.

911 data recovery

Some reports on the Internet claimed that Kroll purchased a data recovery company in 2002, that was involved with the restoration of data from hard disk drives found in the World Trade Center rubble, in an effort to cover-up insider trading on that day. The company that did the recovery was Convar in Germany, but Kroll actually purchased Ontrack in the US. These false reports appear to be based on a claim made by Richard Grove in his Project Constellation: Connect the Dots and See The Big Picture recording in 2006.

Jeffrey Epstein

In 2020, former Kroll Associates employee Roy Den Hollander was accused of murdering the son of New York judge Esther Salas at their family home just as Salas was due to preside over a case involving ties between Jeffrey Epstein and Deutsche Bank.

Resources

• Kroll Ontrack, Kroll's electronic discovery, computer forensics, and ESI consulting subsidiary
• Ontrack Data Recovery, Kroll's data recovery services and software unit
• Fraud Solutions, Kroll's identity theft and data breach solutions unit
• Brazil Raids Kroll Offices in Spy Probe, 27 October 2004, AP

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author
1993 World Trade Center bombing	“The 1993 WTC bombing created the necessary pretext for a massive engineering upgrade of the WTC complex. The purpose of the 1993 WTC bombing was not to bring down the WTC. A truck bomb could not bring down a structure as large as the WTC. The purpose of the 1993 WTC bombing was to create a rationale for a “security upgrade” of the WTC complex. And for this purpose, the 1993 WTC bombing succeeded perfectly. According to Alan Reiss, the PANYNJ’s World Trade Center Director, “After the 1993 bombing, we implemented a ten-year redevelopment program. We were spending a half a billion dollars on upgrades. It was an engineer’s dream”. After the 1993 bombing, the PANYNJ brought in Kroll Associates to do a “complete security analysis”. The executive director of the Port Authority emphasized the importance of Kroll’s work at the WTC by saying, “We have such confidence in [Kroll] that I have followed every one of their recommendations. The person who led Kroll’s work on the WTC was Brian Michael Jenkins.”	Mark Gorton

 

Employees on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End	Description
Thomas Corbally	Fixer
Brian Michael Jenkins	Deputy Chairman of Crisis management	1989	1998	Brian Michael Jenkins is an "expert on terrorism". He played an important role in the redevelopment of the WTC after the 1993 bombing.
Tim Reilly	Unknown

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