A global enterprise-software company faced allegations of malpractice by two former employees of its Indian operations. The company did not instruct investigators directly: the matter came through a leading law firm, so that the investigation ran under legal privilege from its first step. That structure can decide, months later, whether the file can be protected when a regulator or a litigant asks for it.
“The matter came through a leading law firm, so that the investigation ran under legal privilege from its first step.”
The investigation, carried out during my tenure at a global investigations firm, worked under counsel's direction to establish what the two former employees had done, through the records they had left and the counterparties they had dealt with.
Two features of that engagement shaped how I work now. First, the instruction channel matters: an investigation commissioned directly by the company can be difficult to protect, while one commissioned through counsel is easier to defend. Second, the people who matter most have often already left, so the documents and third parties have to carry the case, because the interviews may never happen.