• In March 2023, a client asked us to carry out an investigation into an Egyptian multinational engineering and trading group and the wider family of businesses of which it is a part. The report was commissioned as part of a KYC exercise to discover whether there were any reputational or compliance-related red flags connected to the business or its principals.

We carried out the following work:

• We conducted a thorough search of open source, public record and media reporting on the company and its principals in English, other European languages and Arabic.  All sources were footnoted with URL references where appropriate. Public record searches included corporate registry searches where possible. This included a full history of the company. The purpose of this was to:
  • Ensure we had captured the full scope of the business and the individuals associated with it.
  • To identify any issues of potential concern related to the business or its principals.
  • To provide a solid base for further investigations.
• Having identified 23 corporate entities as part of the wider family group and 16 individuals who were either senior executives or shareholders we carried out further open source searches into those individuals and also cross-checked the names of all individuals and entities on the Dow Jones Risk and Compliance Database.
• We then conducted interviews with three primary sources asking questions based on our background research. These included people who had worked with, dealt with or competed with the main principals in the business under investigation.  Our report included a transcript of the interviews and a commentary on what had been said.

We delivered our findings in a final report in early May 2023.

To find out how we can carry out a similar service for your company, please contact John Hamilton at [email protected]