A corporate investigation is the thorough investigation of a corporation or business in order to uncover wrongdoing committed by management, employees, or third parties.

There are many aspects of corporate investigations and they can vary significantly based on your needs. For example, corporate investigations can uncover if a business partner is legitimate, whether an employee is stealing from the company, or reveal fraud and embezzlement, just to name a few. A corporate investigator’s main job, though, is ensuring a company is running smoothly and within the law.

Depending on what you’re looking to investigate within your business, an investigator will conduct one or multiple of these investigations:

• Undercover Investigation: By blending in with the company, an investigator can look into employee misconduct like theft, substance abuse, or harassment. Investigators will often use covert surveillance as a part of their inspection.

• Research Investigation: Investigators can conduct research in order to find information about companies that you do business with for acquisitions, mergers, joint ventures, venture capital, private equity, and investments. They can also perform in-depth employee background checks.

• Financial Investigation: An investigator conducting a financial investigation can discover embezzlement, money laundering, fraud, and other white-collar crime.

• E-Discovery / Electronic Investigation: With e-discovery, investigators can gather electronically stored information in order to collect necessary evidence. They can also potentially restore lost data.

• Corruption Investigation: An investigator looking for corruption can uncover bribery, illegal foreign exchange, corporate fraud, and industrial espionage.

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Corporate investigations are conducted to help protect organizations from:

• Loss or theft of proprietary information

• Compromised customer or company information

• Abuse or misuse of network

• Liability if network has been used as a launch pad to attack other systems

• Damaged reputation