In this case the security department of Observation Company 2 was contacted by the in house security department of another company (being a client). An employee of (a subsidiary of) Observation Company 2 was suspected by the client of stealing laptops. The manager of the subsidiary had bad experiences with the security department of the client company and wanted the corporate investigators of Observation Company 2 to take the lead. These decided otherwise, as the client company was the one affected by the behaviour. The journal indicates that the cooperation between the two in-house departments did not run very smoothly.
In the end, a report to the police was made, however, too late according to the lead investigator from Observation Company 2, who uttered the opinion that law enforcement should have been involved at an earlier stage: “Additionally, there hasn’t been a report to the police (yet)! At [date] Investigator of [the client company] did say he would ask the local police to act swiftly but apparently this didn’t happen yet. It would have been far better, as far as I’m concerned, to have the police involved, they have the powers of investigation and could have executed a search. Now we are left empty handed. But it is as it is” [quote from the case journal]. In a later entry it is added that “We have given them [investigators from the client company] an update about our interviews and again requested them to make a report to the police. He said he would. We’ll wait and see” [quote from the case journal]. Privately generated information was transferred to the criminal justice system. No conclusive evidence has been found to link the involved person to the thefts. The corporate investigators were unable to obtain the stolen equipment because it was (probably) kept in the involved person’s house and they are not allowed to enter. For this reason, the corporate investigators from Observation Company 2 were pushing for a report to the authorities. No information is available about whether or not the police investigated the case, nor whether it was prosecuted.
3.1.2 Private and public involvement running parallel
Involvement of law enforcement agencies at the stage in which the corporate investigations have not yet been finalised is scarcely ever initiated by corporate security or its clients.91 Respondents indicate that the choice whether or not to involve the authorities is usually made only after corporate investigations have provided information to the client on the events which have occurred. However, it might prove important to involve authorities at an earlier stage, when investigations have not been terminated yet (see also chapter 4). The main reason for this is that the corporate investigations are not yielding the results necessary to solve the problem (see also Gunther Moor & Van der Vijver, 2001).
If they come to [the prosecution office] during their investigations, it’s usually because they can’t get to the information themselves and think, the police and the justice department have more powers to get to things they can’t get to. For example when they find a missing amount of money which has been funnelled to god knows where, then we have more options to seize the money. [Respondent 54 – prosecutor]
Some cases that are investigated by corporate investigators actually originate from actions by public law enforcement agencies. Stimulated by whistle-blowers, supervisory agencies, tax information and/or criminal intelligence, law enforcement agencies (also including special investigative units of for example the tax authority) may investigate norm violations within an organisation. The organisation in question might subsequently hire (or use internal) corporate investigators to get a handle on the situation:
We had such a situation in a case, it started with a police raid. We were hired by the organisation to investigate as well. It is very difficult for us in such a situation that the police won’t share any information. It depends on the circumstances of course, here there was a lot of political pressure so the prosecutor was very wary. There was no information sharing whatsoever. [Respondent 5 – corporate investigator]
Typically, the organisation will receive no information as long as the criminal investigations are still ongoing, the only exception being the information necessary for cooperation with the criminal investigations (an organisation may for example be informed that a search will be executed on the premises). The organisation in question would therefore have to wait until the criminal investigations have been concluded and suspects indicted, to get more information. This is problematic, as no action can
91 Although respondents indicate that some clients tend to want to report to the authorities right away because it is ‘the right thing to do’ (see chapter 4).
be taken by the organisation until then (for example dismiss or suspend the people involved). On the subject of this lack of information sharing more generally, and the issues it produces for organisations, this respondent states:
So what happens when law enforcement gets involved? An organisation may report and they’ll tell them the case has no priority so the report is written down but they won’t investigate. Or they do investigate and somewhere along the lines it all breaks down or the case is dropped. Or they only take two or three pieces out of the bigger story and the involved person is convicted for that but that’s not going to solve the problem for the organisation. Or when action needs to be taken labour law-wise and the criminal investigations take two years, what are you to do with your labour issue? Are you supposed to suspend someone for two years waiting for a trial? And what if he appeals his conviction? So it’s all great, saying that it is only the police who should investigate but that’s not very realistic. [Respondent 13 – corporate investigator]
In such cases, corporate investigators are often hired to do a parallel investigation, so the organisation will be able to act. Typically, the corporate and criminal justice investigations remain separate and run parallel, without much contact between corporate investigators and law enforcement actors.
Those investigations run parallel to each other usually. There’s no information sharing besides that we give our results to the justice department. At most you may have a collegial conversation about how long their investigations will take, what parts they’ll investigate. But we will not be given information. We know more or less what they’re doing because through the client we know who they have interrogated etc. They always zoom in at some particular part while the client wants to have the full picture. [Respondent 1 – corporate investigator]
As already commented upon by the respondent quoted above, corporate investigators may still deduce the focus of the criminal investigations without formally getting information from law enforcement actors.
We have our suspicions of course, because they interrogate people and those people get a copy [of the interrogation report] so through those means we get to know which direction they’re taking. And in this case [real estate fraud], we know they are focussing only on some projects but which ones..? We can guess through the questions they ask. But that’s not even close to a full picture, essentially we don’t really know what they are doing. [Respondent 3 – corporate investigator]
Case study 9 (below) is an example of early involvement of law enforcement actors. Both investigations ran parallel, not sharing information until the corporate investigations were concluded. In this case, although law enforcement agencies were involved almost from the start, the corporate investigations report proved leading for the police investigations. In an informal conversation, an investigator explained that the police postponed most of their investigative efforts until Observation Company 1 provided them with a report of the corporate investigations. In this way, the corporate investigations report served as a guide to criminal justice investigations (being an example of the steering influence corporate investigators may have in criminal justice investigations – see chapter 4).
As discussed in chapter 4, respondents indicate that when they report to law enforcement authorities with the results of their own investigations, this enhances their chances of the case being investigated and prosecuted. This is no guarantee, however: many cases are still left un-investigated by the criminal justice system (as was the case with the case studies discusses in section 3.1.1). Investigations starting by criminal justice investigations efforts, with corporate investigators getting involved later, often are investigated and prosecuted in the criminal justice system, respondents suggest. As this involves an initial investment of law enforcement actors (which is not the case if a norm violation is initially only investigated by corporate