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An insight into the character, personality and passion of the leading figures in the Investigation and Intelligence industry who have shaped the way we gather, analyse and utilise information and intelligence.
Why are we so crap. Excuse my bad language, ladies and
gentlemen. Why are we so bad at getting the. The
investigations and the convictions and taking it in
a swift understanding fraud and prosecuting them?
Yeah, with vigor. So I don't think that's the
fault of the practitioners. I think they're the ones that are
dedicating their. Their lives to. To that.
To public service. Absolutely. You know, kudos to them and
they're all, you know, doing a fantastic job, but they're doing it
with no resources. How do you build up, particularly in
confrontational interviews, how do you build up to the point where the person is comfortable
telling you, even in an adverse situation,
they've done something really, really bad? Right.
That's about building trust with someone whose entire
future depends on not trusting. Not really trusting you
is. Is really important. What's the most dangerous
situation you found yourself in physically as a result
of an investigation? Welcome to the Intelligence
Advantage podcast, where I, Gary Miller, get to talk to the
movers and shapers in the investigation and intelligence industry
and find out exactly how they got to where they are today.
Today I am delighted to be joined by somebody I've known
for a good few years, Will Scott Gall. Will is
a corporate investigator, intelligence practitioner,
whistleblowing specialist and a
master linguist. I'm not going to ask him to say to
speak in tongue, but I may well ask him
a few questions about languages. So, anyway, welcome, Will, and thank you for
spending time with me. Thank you, Gary. Absolutely delighted to
be here. So let's start you off gently, as they
say. Thank you. Talk to me a little bit about
why would a lovely young man from Swindon,
which I think is where you're from, decide to become an investigator? I've
always had a strong sense of fairness, so I remember, you know,
incidents and things at school where things had gone wrong and
you're kind of trying to work out what had happened. I suppose
one of those formative stories was when I was the editor of our local,
like, school newspaper and I decided to run an expose
on conflicts of interest amongst some of the
prefects that the older kids who were running. You
were a controversial young man, weren't you? Yeah, I was. And so I used
my mouthpiece of the newspaper to expose them
all for what they were doing wrong. And, you know, I
felt I was on the side of good right and
transparency and so, so, so stories like that.
Can I beg you to share that story? What was the
naughtiness that was going on at the time? So they would do a walk around
the school Grounds to check for people
smoking. And they would let off their friends if they caught
them. And they were also mostly smokers themselves.
So while they were doing their walk around, they'd also have a cheeky fag.
And so I thought that two tier justice system was
wrong. And I didn't think people who were
actively smoking should be out there trying to catch smokers. So
I ran a story without getting any sort of
permissions or anything like that. And the next day I was hauled up in front
of the deputy head and given a very
clear warning that it was not
appropriate to rat on
your fellow students. Right. Well, no, to bring the
powers that, you know, supposed to be the upstanding members of the
community, to bring them into disrepute. Right. And to challenge
that authority. So I was. My next cover as
editor was a black page with the
word censored all across it. And then I ran a bunch of silly stories about
things that didn't really happen that weren't controversial. But yeah, that
was, I guess, my first intro into. So how old were you? How old
were you at that stage? Probably 17, 18, something like that.
This was. This is really interesting. This was your first
example of whistleblowing,
I guess so I don't know if it was. It was the first.
But I've always been someone that likes to speak up and
speak up when I see people in trouble or when I feel
like something's wrong or going wrong, so. So yeah, that
has occasionally got me into trouble. Okay, but you were
in a position as editor of the magazine
or the newspaper to be able to shine
some light on it, so. Quite
right. And I was always interested in history, I was always
interested in languages. So this kind of the obvious
options for me leaving university were things like maybe
going into the Foreign Office or into journalism,
all those kinds of options. Is that in the family? Do
you have a history of.
None of those. None of those things my dad
worked in. He was an executive at a small business.
Small, medium sized business. He wanted me to go into investment banking because he thought
I'd make a load of money doing that. And he's probably right. And when
that failed, he said I should become a lawyer because I'm very
pernickety and a smart aleck. So he thought that would be a
fantastic career for me as well. But no
offense to you and your esteemed colleagues, I found it a little bit
dry. The law. Yeah. And how do you know when you're
at whatever age that the law
is for you? Particularly if you've had no exposure to it.
You know, if your dad's a lawyer or you're a cousin or your uncle, but,
you know, the law is something that you've got to have
either a particular bent on wanting to do it
because you've seen something, or maybe, like me, you just fall into it
by accident, but that's another story.
But you did Russian at university, didn't you? So where did that come
from? Where did that desire. My Russian
career, let's say, started at school and
I was sitting in my Spanish class, my first Spanish class,
and the head of languages came in and said, there's too many people doing
Spanish and not enough people doing Russian. Does anyone want to do it?
And so, you know, this is part of my character. I was like, oh,
opportunity, yes, great, that sounds fun. So I
picked up my stuff, walked out in Spanish, went and joined the
Russianists and so found it incredibly
difficult. I still am rubbish at
speaking it, but endlessly fascinating and
complicated. And that kept my. Kept my brain going
for. So you were studying how many languages, of course, you had to do French
at school anyway? Yes, I did. I did French, I
did Latin, I did Russian, I did Japanese at school
as well. Gosh, you, you went to a very,
very enlightened school. I mean, I was lucky
if. If I think French and German was about as much as I
squeeze out of my grammar school. I was very lucky. My
English teacher went to Japan on a sabbatical,
right, for a year, and came back having learned enough
Japanese to then say, hey, I'm happy to teach a course on this if
anyone's got it, interested. So, yeah, signed
up for that immediately. And then we did the course that
he could teach and then they. We still wanted to carry on, so they brought
another. Another teacher who'd come in at once a week and
start teaching us, and we did the GCSE in a year and then the A
level in a year. Wow. So what's your Japanese like now?
Not great. I went to Japan after uni, so I lived
out in a rural village
in Kyushu, which is the southern island, for a year
teaching there, which is absolutely incredible experience.
And, yeah, I got up to the stage where I could communicate with
the, you know, the 7 to 12 year olds that I was teaching,
but I couldn't get
much beyond that. The challenges in that
language, particularly around when you're speaking to someone more senior, you
know, if I was speaking to you, for instance, Gary, then I would be using,
I hope you use the most honorific titles possible.
Exactly. The title, even the way that I would speak in a passive
voice instead of an active voice and everything would change. And that was.
That's super difficult. And then there's learning all the symbols, which is,
of course, because you would learn. When I learned
Cantonese and then Mandarin, I learned them all phonetically
with. With Pinyin, but I guess with Japanese you didn't do that. You
would learn from the characters themselves. Yeah. And they've
got three languages, they've got three alphabets, so you've got to learn the twos
of basic alphabets and then all the kanji as
well. So, yeah, it was an endlessly absorbing and
challenging task, which is, you know, probably a theme. Right.
Japanese alongside Russian. Yes. Did you do an own level in Russian
as well? Yeah, so I did a level Russian, a level Japanese, and then
chose one Russian at university. I see. And then when I got
to university, I was thinking, oh, I could carry on with my Japanese. So I
was in the queue, you know, at the sort of first,
whatever, freshers week you had to sign up for modules,
I was in the queue and the head of my Russian and Slavonic studies came
over and said, what are you doing? What are you queuing up from? I was
like, oh, I thought I might try and do some Japanese. Oh, well, we
do other languages in our department. Why don't you do one of those? And so
I said, oh, like, like, like what? And he said, oh, well, we do
Czech. And I was like, oh, my friends had just been sort
of around Europe and come back with some lovely stories
about how cheap the beer was and how beautiful the women were. Okay,
seems like a good reason to learn the language. And so I was like, oh,
all right, I'll give that a shot. And Czech,
compared with Russian and
Japanese, which are endlessly difficult, seems
a lot easier. And I got a lot further with it and. And really
got on with the Czechs and the Czech culture, so ended up
doing that as a big part of my degree. Oh, I see. So not
Russian. No. So I stayed with the Russian because I kind
of had to, but my focus was very much on
Czech. And then I did a dual honour, so I did history as well. So
I had to kind of make a triple honours degree made up just
for me, which they now do. They now allow people to do it. But I
was again the trailblazer there. So I'm going to show you a gap, even in
my ignorance, by saying, is there any connection at all between
Czech language and the Russian language? The Slavic languages,
Slavonic languages are all very Similar, but some use the
Cyrillic Alphabet, like in Russian, some use a kind of
Roman Alphabet like Czech, and others.
And the grammar is broadly the same. A lot of the root words are the
same, but then there might be differences, so. And it's those differences
that will easily identify whether you're speaking Russian
or Ukrainian or Polish or Czech. And so there's similar
enough, like the Romance languages that you can
sort of understand what's happening. But then you'll. Yeah, then
there'll be an old word that throws you, like between Spanish and French and
Italian. So tell me this, because I know from looking at
the material you sent me, and you and I,
I think, are both keen observers and
students of human behavior and culture,
and I remember when I was learning
Cantonese and now Mandarin, that as you start
learning the language and the sentences and the. There's
not much grammar, but the way in which the
Chinese use Southern Chinese, Northern
Chinese use certain words, you learn a lot about their
culture and the way they think. So what did
you learn about the Russians? I can't remember whether you told
me or whether in your paper you said you'd been to Russia during this time,
but. Oh, yeah, many times. I see. So what did you learn?
Well, let's combine it. What did you learn about the Russian
mentality from both your visits there, as well
as your studying the language? So much, but
so little, I think, about Russian culture. I mean, are they.
Sorry to interrupt you, but is it the classic stereotype
of you go in there and yes, no, and like,
you know, completely and utterly, you know, no.
So I probably use the Japanese example as a good,
good one in that they have a very sort of formal
outward facing mask, but then they have a very
different personal, you know, inside the home
culture as well. So. And that definitely exists
in, in Russia as well. I think the. If you
contrast that with sort of your stereotypical American who is
so very out there and immediately trying to
connect with you and share experience, very open
culture that doesn't exist in those countries. So
is it because they're not interested or they've
been educated? I think it's society,
Gary. I think there is this formal and informal
society that exists. I suppose the difference again between the
two is in Russia there was, for
whatever close on 70 years, an
authoritarian government system, which
meant that the only place where you could feel like you could be
yourself was around the kitchen table. I see.
And so that's where close friendships were within the family,
typically with one or two really close friends that you really
trusted. But then the Rest of the world you had quite a formal
relationship with. So in Russia, I found that as
a foreign student, I could engage,
but I didn't really crack that kitchen table
life. I did live with a host family. They were wonderful and they gave me
some amazing experiences. What year was this, will? Which year?
2000. Ish. 2002, something
like that. 2002, I think I was there. So this would have been.
Whose regime would it have been? So Putin came in
On New Year's Eve, 99, I think it was. So, yeah,
Putin was in, but it was still the turbulent years of the
Chechen wars and terrorism and
rampant raider capitalism was still
rife. So really interesting, really interesting times
to be there. Did you feel in any shape or form
that there were microphones in the wall or that
the family you were with had been said, find out as much
about this smelly foreign as possible? Not at all. Not
at all. It was, I think on both sides, there were far
bigger fish to fry than some. Some students,
that's for sure. And in fact, I was super welcome, you know, by
the. By the community that I was in. It was very small, but, you know,
I was in Voronezh, which is not far from the
Ukraine border. Oh, wow. Even more tropical.
Right? Yeah. Is it. Is it an area that is
currently in the middle of the fray? So
when there was the march on Moscow by
Prigozhit and his mercenaries, they went through Voronezh and
blew some stuff up there. But. So it's on that. It was on
that route. But is it still Ukrainian, as it were?
They still occupy that Ukraine or. No, so it was always part
of. It was always part of Russia. Sorry. Okay. It's the
east, east of the Don. I see. Okay. Don River.
But it's one of the sort of staging post cities in that area that they
would then sort of close. So what was the most important thing you
learned, apart from, you know, this, about the Russians? I
think it is that they've got this public and it's private, and
it's absolutely wonderful when you are welcomed into the private
world. Yeah, right. And suddenly you realize that
there's this entire culture and things
that was just beyond your grasp. So the few times that that happened, that was
amazing. And also I think the way that
their history, recent history, has really shaped
their connections to people and how they conduct
themselves and how they worked, particularly with
someone like me from. From outside. Does it treat you with any
suspicion or not? Oh, no, no, I don't. I. I don't think so.
But not in that sense. But it's harder. It's harder to
ingratiate yourself into that community than it would be in, say,
you know, say in the US or in the uk. And did you
lived there for how long? What was your longest? Well, so I was there for.
I was there for six months and then in Prague for six months for your
reports. Yeah. But in Japan, you. In Japan, you were there for a year.
Yeah. Yeah. You got a little bit deeper under the skin
of the Japanese culture. Well, I was working in
Japan and, you know, if I was. If I had my opportunity again
to study abroad, I would look to work
rather than study. So I was in a very closed
community of English students. We did loads together, whereas
I had friends who worked as teaching assistants or did
other. Other jobs. Right. And they. They had a. They had a real life
and that was much more. Gave them so many more opportunities to meet people
and to engage. And so I recommend doing that. So in. In Japan, I was
in this community where I was the only gaijin, the only sort of foreigner
for. There's three of us across about an hour's
drive's distance in the. In the mountains. And
so everyone knew who I was. And so if I just looked clueless in. In
the supermarket trying to work out what I was going to feed myself, someone would
come over. One of. One of the kids or someone in my English, sort of
adult English class would come over and say, how can I help?
What are you looking for? And it was just wonderful. We were so
looked after and made to feel such members of the community.
And, you know, in 2019, when we had the Rugby World cup
in Japan, one of the games was in Kyushu.
A couple of the games were there in the semi, the quarterfinals, I think. So
we went back with the family. So I took my kids. Oh, wow. Back to
the school where I was teaching, met some of the same people who are still
there, I'm still in touch with, and was able to reintroduce them
to Japanese culture. And again, they felt so welcomed into
people's homes and into their lives and still talking about. And it's not the
vocabulary you're using, forgive me, about
Russia, you're not using welcome.
Correct. And what. I didn't. I didn't feel that. I did feel that
in tech in Czech Republic, certainly, and I felt that in.
In Japan, but. You're very astute, Gary. I didn't quite get that same.
I didn't get under the skin of Russia at that. Certainly at that time, as
maybe I did to an extent, through some of the work I was doing
in investigations afterwards and I got to meet some people there. But
still, still a bit of an enigma for me, I would say. I was going
to ask you that. I mean listen, even speaking two or three
words of a language always takes you,
even if it's one degree above and beyond the
gormless non linguistically
talented person. But
later on in your career, when you were,
I assume primarily once you joined Kroll, when
you were going to the east on, on foreign
investigation, did it give you a significant
advantage over the whatever colleagues you had that
didn't speak Russian? Certainly I owe my career
to having the languages in the first place. I think
that gave me a way into
Kroll. And yeah, doing investigations
don't always have to let on that you know the language. So you can sit
there and ask the questions in English, have
an interview in English and then they'll stop and they'll talk to each other in
their local language, tell you everything you really need to know
inadvertently and then you can sort of, you know, start
directing them towards the facts they've just told you. So.
So yeah, really useful and certainly doing investigations
there, it gives you a huge, huge advantage. And could
you, at that time, could you interview somebody
that didn't speak any English? Were you good enough to be able to.
Yeah, I did interviews in Russian and in fact my first
overseas trip was in Czech Republic for Kroll. We
were doing, we were hired by the Czech
Foreign minister Carol from Schwarzenberg, whose
coalition government had just collapsed and they needed the support of
another local populist politician who
had a checkered history and some bribery
allegations. So we were hired to essentially do an audit of this
junior partner's finances to see whether he was a
reputable enough business partner of political Parma, let's say
for the government, which was very high profile
and caused a lot of front page
headlines about us and our investigation. And I think the investigation
probably lasted longer than the coalition that they formed afterwards
and turning, but it was fantastic. So interviewing in Czech
and then similarly doing interviews in Russian as well, did
you end up giving the person a clean bill of health or it never got
to a point? Clean enough for politics? Enough.
Excellent. And were you the lead of that team? Were you the team
leader? No, no, I was the most junior person on. On it. So who was
the team leader? Helsby or somebody? Yeah, Tommy. Tommy was
leading it and then a couple of other people and me. So, you
know, fresh in. This is 2007, 8 I think I'd been
in the company less than 6 months to get on the tap, on the shoulder,
saying, you speak Czech, don't you? I'm like, gulp.
Yeah. And then, you know, as you know, with
these investigations, you're on a plane within sort of 24 hours or
whatever, you're in the offices of. Of the client, and.
And the work begins and. And your life and your experience changes forever
as a result of it. So give me a few nuggets of what you
learned from one of the icons of certainly
Kroll's history, Toby Helsby. And I knew him
back in the day, but he was fluent, at least in Russian, maybe other
Slavonic languages as well, I don't know. But no, he wasn't a
Russian speaker. Oh, he wasn't? No. But he did a lot of work
for Russian oligarchs, and I was very lucky to work with him
very much as a mentor of mine for many years. Tell me what you
learned from him. What would have so much.
Tommy had such a way with clients, and
I have such a rare talent to gain their trust,
usually by telling them no, which is unheard of. You know,
too many, I think, consultants, myself included, we're
eager to please. Right. And client's got a problem, and we
think, well, how can I solve that problem? And let's go, and
we start from there. Tommy would start from a much more. He had a philosophy
background, and he came from. At these problems from a different perspective
to me. Instead of trying to fix it, he'd say, well, why. Why are we
doing this in the first place and what's going on? And
so he loved nothing more than saying no to clients who would then
desperately, desperately want to work with him because everyone else was saying, yes,
how much? And bending over backwards. So I think that was
important in a consulting world. He was also wonderful
at instinctively knowing what the answer was
to a problem way before any of the rest of us
got even close. So I would be carefully following the
breadcrumbs through the investigation to try and get. Get somewhere. And you
kind of present it to him, and he'd have already worked it out,
you know, and understood the details. So he had that
amazing ability. Even though. Even though he wasn't
a Russian speaker, there was something about his
fairy dust that enabled him to understand the Russian
mentality. Is that it? Yes, yes, definitely. He definitely
understood the world that they. These business people
were. Were operating in, the challenges they were facing.
And, you know, we had. We had clients
that just wanted to keep Tommy on.
On speed dial. Right. They didn't necessarily need us to do
any investigations or to do any particular so corporate due
diligence or anything like that. They just wanted Tommy fairy
dust on call when they needed it.
He was for me, the best trusted
advisor that I've come across in the investigations. And was
he a good mentor in a sense of helping you
understand what you hadn't done? Right. Or did he just expect you to
look, learn and get on with it? I
frequently told Tommy that he didn't do enough to support people,
I think, but that was his, I think that was his style.
I'm much more of a sort of hands on teacher
type, you know, when I'm working with people, trying to support
them, show them through their mistakes. But Tommy was like me,
he's old school. I mean, I can't remember what the age
difference is or was because
I'm writing saying Tommy is no longer with us. Is that right?
He, he sadly passed away about,
yeah, six, seven years ago. But he was. Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was
in his, I think still maybe 60.
I see. So we're probably not far away from each other. Yeah, probably. But it's
still old school enough to be. What do you mean, teacher? I
went to school, I learned, I came out. Just watch me and
do, do like I do. No, yeah, yeah. He was a watch and
learn guy certainly. And in those days you're in the office all
the time so you can watch and learn from,
from more senior people. And he had a lot of support
from, from other managers and so on. Who, who would do all of the,
you know, the line by line. I remember when I put
my first, my first of due diligence report in thinking I
just, you know, absolutely smashed it. And this is amazing, all these great findings.
It just comes back like red ink everywhere.
But he wasn't one of those people who just said, you know, I don't know
if you work much with Omergensory. No, I've met him a few times, but I
never worked with him. Omer's also absolutely wonderful guy.
Huge respect for him, but he would, I'd write a, you know,
I'd love a long report, so I'd write a 60 page report. He'd read it
until the first typo or the first thing that doesn't make sense and then just
pass it back. So no.
Which was tough because you don't quite have all the
feedback, but you learn a huge amount from both of them. How did
you learn in those days how to interview a witness? How did you Learn
what you needed to put in a report. Was there a
crawl bible of if you want to create a
report, this is what it should look like? Well, I certainly created
some of that when I was briefly sort of responsible
for our analyst team and tried to give it a bit more structure. Now
crawl was a little bit unstructured I'd say when I joined
in terms of that. I think there's different sides to the business. So
if you look at the due diligence sides, that's now
the whole industry is very sort of formulaic.
You can use lots of AI, you can really drive huge
volumes of red flag type type checks. Those
reports can be very standardized. Right. I think on
the investigation side, two
questions you asked. But on, on interviewing, I was not allowed
anywhere near interviewing someone for, for years. Right.
Your job is to stay quiet, right. Take notes and, and listen
and listen and learn. Which is really hard for me because I'm desperate. I'm like,
yeah, but this question I've got to ask and occasionally I'd
pipe up and then get kicked under the table or something. So you learn through
observation and time. A bit like in
Japan if you're learning to be a sushi chef, you spend two years just
cooling down the rice right. Before you're even allowed near a knife,
before even allowed to roll the sushi. So similar to that, you've
got to go through that experience. And I think interview techniques
learned a lot on the investigation side from sitting in and observing
that. So how do you, how do you build up,
particularly in confrontational interviews? How do you build up to the point where the person
is comfortable telling you, even in an adverse
situation they've done something really, really
bad. Right. And so
that's about building trust with someone whose entire
future depends on not trusting. Not really trusting you
is really important. So most of the interviews I did to begin with would have
been non confrontational interviews. It's then as you get more
experience, you can start doing those confrontational interviews. And
you must have a Jules Kroll story for me somewhere.
I didn't really cross paths with Jules to be honest,
apart from Glad handing around the office when he came to London. But yeah, we
didn't. He left about 18 months or so into
my time. So leadership wise, Tommy was my.
And he was the man. Yeah. And did you, did you just as a matter
of interest, did you come across other
investigators in other
consultancies and companies and get a sense of
how different you and they were from each other at the time?
Yeah, really good question. So Obviously some people left while I was
there and went on to go to rival firms. And there were many firms
that were set up by former Kroll. Oh, that's true.
Aleco being one of them. GPW
Blag. I think there are quite a few that sort of came out of,
came out of Kroll. So everyone knew.
Everyone sort of knew everyone. There was quite a lot of
pseudo competition, I think with some of the control
risks being the other sort of original London investigations
firm. So we had some natural competition with them, but
not a lot of crossover. I suppose the time you meet other
investigators coming across them is when you're on disputes and you're on other, you
know, either sides, opposite sides. And that was a
real fascinating eye opener because some of the techniques that they
would use kind of would astonish
were frankly astonishing. Let me, let me hold you there and ask
you this question. When you joined and I
remember, were you around long enough
to have come across the network security group,
Mike Comer and people like that or not. I know the name from listening
to your amazing podcast. But no, not, no, didn't come across
indirectly. So I just wonder
what did the powers that be
sit down and tell you what you can and can't do under the law? No,
no, no. You just, you can't beat the bejesus out of this person to
get the information. Will you actually have to, you know, do what
did you know? Or was it, again, just watch and learn? I
think a lot of it, because it's not a regulated sector like
yours, Gary, and I think, I think it could be or should be and
I think there's certainly movements towards, towards having
professional qualifications for investigators,
professional standards, professional organizations, chapters or whatever that we
can be part of. Yeah, exactly. So I'm a
huge fan of that. It was a little bit at your
discretion. As someone who's into fairness
and I'm quite
compliance driven person, what I felt was up to my
discretion was relatively, yeah, was pretty
narrow. There are definitely other people who were quite
happy. I'm talking about things like social engineering
or you know, the worst of it, the sort of brown envelope stuff that you'd
hear about other, other people accessing. Can you give me an example?
Not obviously within Kroll, God
forbid, but one of the things you came across that
you'd heard of or even that you uncovered the other
investigators had been involved in. You've got a stock.
Yeah, so one of the, one of the stories that I worked on,
probably not before, not long before, before I
left Kroll was quite a High profile corporate dispute.
Very much, I don't know, I guess a rival, you know,
Shakespearean battle for the throne
type case within a large global corporate. And
our client was being hammered in the media
leaks coming out about their private activities and things
like that. And there were people on the other side, they
had hacks. His
emails. Right. So they. Client emails, our
clients emails. They'd hacked into his emails and he was
a CEO or someone was, he was a senior executive,
senior exec. Okay, senior exec
number two or number three. And so they had, they had hacked in
private emails, source documents, leaked those to the media,
publish them. And this was rife right in the mid, mid to late
2015s and there's been stories about
many, many stories about whether that's journalists being hacked
or subjects being hacked and their emails
conveniently appearing in the dossier of a
law firm or on the description you're able to talk about. Yeah,
so that I don't know. I think, I think so.
I don't think our involvement was, was public. But
there are plenty of those stories. If you look at one that's just
jumping back in the news, I think I saw it yesterday,
was Deckert and their dispute with
lawyers across the Jordanian lawyers who ended up in a UAE
prison. But there was this big proxy battle between
ENRC shareholders allegedly behind
attempts to support one particular side
in a dispute in the Middle east against another side. And there was,
you know, there was just skullduggery everywhere and people ended up
in jail and whistleblowers got caught.
Investigators became the focus of the case and it was real, no
holds barred. So in the case that we haven't named
yet, just the one before, was the material that
was published, was it obvious
on the face of it, evidence of naughtiness as I call it, or was
it. No, it was potential conflicts of interest
and things of that nature. I don't think our client had done anything
particularly egregious. They just made it, they were able to make
a lot of money from signed off consultancy agreement or
something like that. So. But they had
surveillance on their family. They had,
you know, hacked them.
There was a lot going on, which was really surprising when you found out the
names of some of the firms that were involved because you'd think that you'd
expect better of them. And when that happened, do
you recall, and were you involved in the
sometimes, often counterattack in terms of
going to the courts, asking the judge to injunct
or to disclose how they did it, where they did it, was there a
Huge. Or was there a mini legal battle about the
disclosure issue? There wasn't on that case. It was,
I think, client appetite. So.
They wanted resolution and closure rather than to.
To fight. So, yeah, we didn't bring Mishkan onto that one.
No, because it's interesting, isn't it? It's.
It's really as everything you and I do in
fraud investigation, it's a balancing
of risk and the, the
likelihood of a counterattack. So there are
cases like the one you've just mentioned where clients
do take, or even sometimes, God forbid,
consultants take a huge risk in doing something
unlawful, knowing that the other side
just isn't. I say you never know for sure, but it's very
unlikely to go to the police and to create a huge
brouhaha and to spend £100,000. And
you know that just by the leaking of that document, you're
going to bring the case to a resolution. Yeah. Lawfare is fascinating,
isn't it? And those tactical decisions that are made.
Talking about lawyers, as we were. What is
it? And you've come across a fair few. What is it that lawyers are
not very good at, in your experience in fraud?
Investigating? You mean apart from investigating? Apart from investigating.
Let's start with the smallest part of that question. I would
say I really enjoy working with lawyers to cover off
all the bits that I'm not thinking of. So the legal
strategy, where. Where can we actually use the information?
What, as you said, using injunctions and, and getting
search orders and freezes and all those other kinds of things that, that are
absolutely fantastic. But I do sometimes think that their
approach can be a bit overly legalistic. So
there's a scope of work and it's defined and this is the question. And so
we answer this and it stays too much in the box.
Rather than as an investigator, sometimes you're more interested in
just the why and what's going on. Okay.
And from what you say, and of course I couldn't possibly comment,
but it's kind of a
systemic problem with the way lawyers are trained, that they're trained
to look at a case and to distinguish it from the previous case or to
progress in a very. From what you're saying, in a
very methodical and planned approach.
Yeah, I mean, it's a jibe. I like to put
accountants as well, forensic accountants. So if they're doing
a forensic accounting money laundering case, they'll start at
where the money's been taken from and sort of. And where it's ended up and
they'll try and follow a very Logical process. But
your criminal is not a trained lawyer always, and they're not always
a trained accountant. So their approach is,
I've done a bunch of stuff in order to get to this objective of mine
and I've achieved that. So they're not necessarily
following that same logical case, structured
thing. They're much more messy. And I think as an investigator, sometimes
it's, it's better to put yourself in the shoes of, of the
messy reality and try and understand what they were
attempting to do, rather than to define it as that sort of
legal, you know, interesting
kind of angle to what you're saying, because there's a big
difference between the training of investigators
in the UK and the background
and training of investigators all over the U.S.
who are, I don't know about mostly, but there's a large number
of lawyers that go into the
investigation. Kroll has their own and so does Dan and
others. So does that mean
why is there a difference in the way they're trained in the US and why
is it that they, on the face of it, make better
investigative lawyers than, than
their English counterpart, for example? Well, I mean,
in Dan Odello's case and many others, the fact that they've
worked both sides, I think is hugely important. So I'd echo
what I think he's said to you on one of your other podcasts, that in
the States, most sort of white collar crime
lawyers work on the government side for a period of their career
prosecuting cases, and they then have a
great understanding of what it takes and what's required on
that side before they go into
private practice. So they've got a much better handling of that. Whereas
I would say amongst my legal contacts here, I could probably count on one
hand those who have worked for this SFO or worked for
prosecutors. Why don't we copy that model? Do
you think, Will? I think that
our legal framework here is massively behind where it needs
to be. It was probably quite effective in Victorian areas.
I'm not sure it is capable of addressing modern global
frauds and massive issues. So you've got a huge
salary imbalance and little rewards sort of career
wise for you, spending five, six years working
for the government before you go into private practice. So. So I would want to
see all of you know, I want to see that American
model adopted here. I think it's massively
beneficial for the state and I think it's beneficial for
lawyers in private practice. Do you think it will ever happen, though?
I mean, the legal system? Not
unless they find some money from somewhere to fix the
legal system. And that's one of many, many issues I
see talking about, you know, fairness and, and so on,
is that, that access to swift justice, even if you,
even if you're a client and you've got fantastic lawyers working for you and you,
you absolutely rock solid case, it's going to take you
years to get any kind of resolution to your
case through the courts and then many years afterwards to get any financial
redress. The same if you're a whistleblower, if, if you've
genuinely reported something in the public interest, you get
retaliated against, you lose your livelihood, you lose your job, you get
blacklisted, you're still looking at the same amount of time, five to
seven years before you get any financial redress
or any rights through your employment contract. So
why would you whistleblower in this country? Why, so
why would you work in. No disrespect to the public
servants out there, but why are you incentivized
to, to go into public lawyering and why are you
incentivized to whistleblow if so often
the outcome for you is going to be negative? Can you give me.
Now I'm leaping forward to the last part. Sorry, not
the last part, the, the last, but one part of your
career because you're now reincarnated as,
as a consultant. Yet again, congratulations.
Thank you. But legal in general, one of your responsibilities
was whistleblowing, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. And so
I guess you'll tell me, is there an example where maybe
internally, maybe not, where you can say this is how
badly the whistleblower system worked. The guy lost his job, he lost
his family. Is there something that you can share with? So there's many,
many on both sides. So I think it's worth saying that of the
whistleblowers that I worked with at legal in general,
and there were some, not huge numbers, the vast, vast
majority reported concerns. Those concerns were addressed
quickly, effectively, and the issue was resolved,
no comeback on them. They carry on their working life
completely normally and that's great. And that's how it should be.
Right. And you don't see any of that, none of us
hear about it because it doesn't, doesn't make the news because the issue is,
is resolved. Unfortunately, you do get these cases where
people suffer huge detriment. And
you know the ones that jump to mind for me, the, the whistleblower
UK CEO from, from Olympus when he
discovered massive issues there. And then there was another one in
the shipping industry out of Monaco
who again, Was a, was a lawyer and started questioning
transactions at SBM Offshore, I think,
and discovered that the whole, you know, the senior executive team
were paying bribes and authorizing bribes. And
instead of being able to resolve that issue, he
became the issue. And so he was put under an Interpol
notice and basically was living in
Croatia, unable to return back to the UK to be with his
family under sort of house arrest for
years. Is the American system better than ours?
In other words? Can you, if you're going to
whistleblow, you would say go to America and do it then
from a financial incentive perspective and from a likelihood of
prosecution. I am, yeah. In
favor of the US system, they've got wealth questions as
to whether it's still well funded and resourced in the last 18 months. But
historically has been well funded, well resourced. And if
you're a whistleblower, there's a chance that you can get,
you know, a financial return. And the largest payments were in the
hundreds of millions of dollars to individuals who blew the whistle on financial
wrongdoing. And they've. The state, through the SEC
and others, has recouped billions of dollars through
fines off the back of those investigations. And those
investigations haven't run for years and years and years. They've
been relatively quickly investigated.
They've secured a significant penalty and the world has
moved on. We've had cases here prosecuted for more than sort of
10 years by our, by the SFO and others that have
not resulted in any. Why are we so crap.
Excuse my bad language, ladies and gentlemen. Why are we so bad
at getting the investigations and the
convictions and taking it in a swift
understanding fraud and prosecuting them. Yeah, with
vigor. So I don't think that's the fault of the
practitioners. I think they're the ones that are dedicating
their, their lives to, to public service.
Absolutely. You know, kudos to them and, and they're all, you know, doing
a fantastic job, but they're doing it with no resources.
I remember working with law of police agencies. This
is more than 10 years ago. But they were using such outdated software
on their systems. Simple like Microsoft. They were on whatever
Microsoft 2003 and this is in the mid
2015 or something. So they're 10 years out of
date. Right. So they're running on shoestring budgets.
They're under resourced in terms of manpower, technology.
That's part of it. The other part, Gary, for me is that they're then the
legal system, the framework isn't, isn't effective
and there's questions about Whether jury trials
are the right way forward or not. I probably shouldn't go into that because
I'm not an expert. But I would like to see
rapid access to justice. And some of
it's not that complicated. Right. Some of the frauds don't
require a 10 year investigation. They require quick, you
know, review. Have you not done this? Yep. You haven't done that. Right. Here's a
fine. Here's $100 million fine or whatever it is, and they'll pay
it because for them it's like a parking ticket, Gary. It's a,
it's a cost to doing business for a large organization and you just pay your
fines and you, and you move on. Does that fix culture? No, but it's a.
So if I, if I handed you the Miller magic wand.
Oh, yes, please. And that magic wand would enable you to invest
into. I'll use investigators in the private sector
first and then the public sector. What
legal power would you.
Tomorrow, if I gave you that wand or today, would
you waive it and give to investigators in order to
assist the investigation of corruption,
bribery and fraud? That's going to be your quote from the
pod, but probably Reform GDPR would be
a good place to start. Okay. But specifically,
can I tempt you to say, to give a private
investigator the ability to. You have to take
a step back. So you want to have a regulated industry
that is only working in, let's say, public interest,
with proper controls and checks and balances around them. But to be able to rapidly
access information that should be transparent, I think is
fair. There are other systems around the world where people's
tax information is more public. Their other private information
about them is more readily available, particularly if they're in
public roles like in the US Criminal
convictions is another one. There's all sorts of information that could assist
investigators, but it has to be done then proportionately,
if you've got that situation, as I said, the heirs to the throne,
both of them are both going to hire lawyers and investigators who are
both going to have legitimate claims
as to why they should be the next boss and why
the other person is a piece of work and they would want those investigated.
And so those tools need to be used really carefully. For me,
the biggest change is in a UK system, it would be the magic
wand would be some kind of global, particularly for law
enforcement, sharing of information sort of
instantly and being able to then seize assets
globally pretty much straight away. So if you look at Cambodian
scam centers, for instance, some of the disruption work they've done around
using sanctions as a tool. They can use sanctions because that's
more effective than trying to go down the mlat, the
Mutual Legal assistance treaties, sort of requests for information
and then trying to get some kind of extradition. And, you know, you're talking years
and years and years. And what. What about a magic wand
to the effect that victims of fraud and crime
should be given access to
the investigation material by the police and
they should be able to share it with their civil law
recovery investigators. Good suggestion. If you think
that 40% or more of crime in the UK that's reported
is fraud, yet almost none of it gets
investigated. And there needs to be some way for those
victims to get redress. So I agree. Some kind of
system where they can access swift
justice. Amor. Because we're operating the private sector and the
public sector operating in parallel
silos with unbelievable talent
on both sides, not being able to share ideas,
intelligence. It's not working. Yeah,
I've been to conferences for 10 years or more where we've talked about
public private partnerships. I've worked on some. And we're still talking
about it. You know, the most recent conference I went to, they're still saying, let's
work on sharing information, and we're not. Let me ask
you this. Let me ask you this. Cause I'm frightened by the fact that you
and I have managed to use 58
minutes of my allotted 60. So I've got to
ask you this question. A little bit of excitement. What's the most
dangerous situation you found yourself in physically
as a result of an investigation? Not me, but I've had
colleagues when I was at Kroll who were sniped at as they were entering
an exit, exiting a client site. Shot
at, shot out. Yeah. So there was the. The bad
guy was hiding in the woods, trying to get a bead on.
Why didn't they want to shoot you? What was wrong? I
didn't. I didn't get to go on that case. Okay. But no,
there are definitely times when I felt under.
Under threat. I think the way that I've always approached it pretty
phlegmatically, is that to make sure that I'm not the only person who
knows the information. And so too often you see
journalists fall out of windows in Russia or be killed
pretty brazenly. Did you ever fear, because you were investigating
in the Eastern European sector, which is
not known for its. Its kindness and safety, did
you ever feel that you might be thrown out of a window or shot in
the back of the head? Yeah, but I think what was important was
not being the only person with the knowledge. And so if you look at the
case of Daphne Caruana Galithia in Malta,
the journalistic community came together after her
assassination and were able to finish off her work and
ultimately secure convictions and things and find out who did it. And
so I've always felt that I don't want to be in a position. The killer
as well. Yeah, they found the two individuals,
I mean, working with the police, but by putting huge, huge
journalistic pressure and public interest into
prosecuting and investigating the case. And it's a real, you
know, for me it's the standout story where someone's
investigations didn't die when they were killed.
And so I've always tried to take that phlegmatic approach that
if, if I am the victim, that the
story will somehow live on and make sure that information always. It
makes it pointless, killing me because
everyone else, you know, other people know everything that I know, but. Did you ever
receive one of those anonymous telephone calls?
Go home, Mr. Gaul. I did.
I didn't. I definitely had a few threats that I'd get arrested
or, you know, but no, thankfully I was
never, I was never the subject of, of those cases.
And, and you know, hopefully as an investigator, I don't want to be the part,
I don't want to be the focus of the story. I'm the observer,
I'm, I'm the, you know, the investigator.
I'm not, I'm not the subject. You're the messenger,
unfortunately. Yeah. Listen, on that note,
we've, we've. I've got so many more questions to ask you, so I may
well try and entice you back into the,
into the studio. Yeah, happy to love to
talk about how to get people into investigations.
Absolutely. And look at other career
relate related issues. So I'm going to
say in
Japanese, I'm going to say
arigato wakarimas.
Arigato gozaimas. Sorry.
Thanks, Will. Thanks very much, Gary. An enjoyable and
agreeable guest. Thank you so much. Cheers. Thank you.
Take care. Thank you for listening and if you enjoyed
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