Digging for Disclosure: Investing with Intelligence

随着PONZI计划和其他公司罪行继续占据新闻头条新闻，现在比以往任何时候都需要掌握智力，以保护其交易和投资。在您继续前进的潜在投资之前，请记住信息随时为您服务。只需几个关键预防工具，例如在背景检查中收集的信息，投资者可以保护自己免受一系列问题或冲突，这些问题可能不仅影响其决定，而且影响有关趋势的结构。

P>虽然投资界的金融和法律尽职调查被接受规范，适当彻底的背景检查管理团队，基金经理或投资顾问经常被忽视，将投资者易受攻击并受到企业犯罪的影响。

Thorough background checks are investors’ greatest tool as they provide necessary information to make sound investment decisions. Having spent over 30 years in business investigations, I can attest to the ways in which background checks can illuminate challenges investors face and ways to overcome these barriers to deals.

Sometimes background checks will uncover daunting information, like when we found a CEO spent his earlier years running a prostitution ring or the hedge fund manager who had crossed several country borders throughout Asia with the hopes his insider trading charges wouldn’t catch up with him. But, whether the information is inflammatory on its surface or implicitly conflicts with investors’ interests, the key is knowing all of this before investors get involved.

For example, we were once hired by investors who were contemplating an investment in a company founded by a group of young, Ivy League tech guys. The company was a sneeze away from going public. The founders voluntarily disclosed to the investors that they were arrested for smoking marijuana while in college. Before the investors made a commitment, they called us to run background checks on the founders.

We found that their initial “disclosure” was downplayed just a little: they were federally criminally indicted for running a national cocaine and marijuana ring. They were caught by the Drug Enforcement Agency and had each served several years in prison. Did the investors walk away from the deal? No. They removed the founders from their positions of officers and directors and allowed them to remain large shareholders in the company. The company eventually went public and remains successful.

严格的背景检查揭示信息，不仅阐明了执行或基金经理的完整性，还要对交易的完整性进行阐明。投资者面临的最常见问题是材料不披露和利益冲突。不披露是当负责投资者金钱的个人选择省略有关自己或其职业历史的关键信息，例如被证券所禁来的，这是在影响或撒谎的驾驶中驾驶他们所在的大学。而且，利益冲突是由会影响交易生命的任何事情，例如个人参与将欺骗交易致力于承诺的行为;被投资者或贷方起诉的模式和其他问题。

有时表面在背景检查中的情况可能是令人震惊，可笑和复杂的;投资者需要准备好处理任何事情。重要的是要使工具和人员能够识别任何颜色的欺诈，但也必须知道如何解释在背景检查中可能表面的信息。

Some of the most notorious fraudsters in recent headlines, the likes of Bernie Madoff and Robert Allen Stanford, in retrospect, each had their own red-flags that were overlooked. If proper background checks had been done and properly analyzed many investors might have saved themselves millions, and also kept their names out of the headlines.

Everyone has a different appetite for risk. But investors should know as much about their exposure before the deal is done. We have seen clients respond nonchalantly when we discovered a fund manager had been the main perpetrator in a bank fraud scheme and other clients who have cancelled a deal because a member of the management team had an outstanding federal tax lien. A good background check does not rely on mere data; it is analysis of the facts uncovered that assists investors in making tough decisions and leveraging information to their benefit.

With the intelligence of a background check, investors can diffuse an inevitably explosive deal, resuscitate an investment that looked murky or walk away from a deal or investment that was nothing other than a disaster. Let information be your advocate.

Kenneth Springer is the author of “Digging for Disclosure: Tactics for Protecting Your Firm’s Assets from Swindlers, Scammers and Imposters” and is the President and Founder of Corporate Resolutions Inc. Mr. Springer is a Certified Fraud Examiner and a former Special Agent with the FBI.