When it comes to corporate investigation, things have gotten a little sensitive. Welcome to America… In fact, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that is imposed today on corporations has made the corporate world more leery of all types of investigations. That is why my practice always needs to tread very carefully in this area. There is a law called respondent superior, and to a degree is unfair to the corporate industry, and you will see why in a minute.
I have been hired by many lawyers on cases I cannot discuss with the general public but suffice it to say I have run into that “word” on a number of occasions. Get this, the reason why corporations are so leery is when a crime is committed by an employee, acting as a representative of the company , the company is held responsible for the crime, whether the company knew about the crime being committed or not, through the respondent superior act. Nice huh?
The corporate world knows that when respondent superior is used in a case against them there is really nothing they can fight back with, and so most cases are settled out of court. The truth is that, to the court system, it doesn’t matter if the law breaker is a high managerial officer or not, and it doesn’t matter if the company had intent or not. This is why this law is unfair to the corporation, and why the corporate world is so scared of an investigation. Then again.. take a look at what it has done to the banking industry as of late. All the bail outs? Again Welcome to America.
The professional investigator will many times find the investigation blocked by the corporation, no matter what the investigator is investigating. On a number of occasions I have has often found a corporate door slammed in my face, so don’t ever expect a corporation to be open and honest or to furnish information about an investigation easily. This is why performing corporate investigation is so sensitive; you really have to do it without the corporation in question finding out what you are doing.
Truthfully, the corporation is almost always viewed as the villain and rarely gets much sympathy. And now with corporations working on different continents and in different countries, everyone agrees that the respondent superior needs to be re examined and companies should be able to use a “good faith defense” against the actions of unscrupulous employees.
With that said keep in mind that any corporate investigation are a tricky business and if you take one on as an investigator it will be very sensitive, and expect no help from the corporation. In fact, you should probably expect the corporations to block all your investigation leads.
