Diligence

Diligence, Llc or Diligence Global Business Intelligence SA is an industrial espionage network fronted by former members of the U.K. and U.S. intelligence services, originally created by former GHW Bush administration members to obtain private contracts from Enron. It claims to advise on corporate investments in foreign markets, as well as protecting corporations from legal investigations, what it calls “reputational threats”. The company has a mailbox address in Geneva, Switzerland, and post office boxes elsewhere, with members of the network being primarily contractors who work independently.

Origins and history

Diligence's website states that it was founded in 2000 “by former members of the CIA and its British counterpart, MI5.” The company’s head office is in Geneva, Switzerland, at a serviced office. It is one of a growing number of organisations which sprang up to exploit the demand for private security in the wake of 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2003 Diligence opened an office in Baghdad to provide security services and is now targeting Latin America.

Activities

On its website Diligence summarises its activities as:

• Due diligence of complicated cross border transactions
• Litigation support and international arbitration
• FCPA and anti-corruption concerns
• Reputational threats and controversy risk management
• Brand and intellectual property protection
• Fraud and personnel issues
• Political risk and market entry studies

The company’s website includes a selection of case studies. They are entirely unsourced and almost impossible to verify, but include elements of penetration and subversion of protest groups, as well as anti-union activities:

Case Study 08

Threat Assessment & Physical Security

Diligence was retained by a prominent European scientific research group to provide early warning of a possible attack by a violent activist organization that had accused the institution of testing products on animals and that had also begun to harass managers of the institution. Our research indicated that there was friction within the activist group.