About
Money moves around the world today with great speed and efficiency. To secure the return of misappropriated assets, a team with global expertise and intricate local knowledge is critical to a successful strategy. K2 Integrity investigators have accumulated experience and knowledge few can match, and can provide critical intelligence in a wide range of contexts, including determining whether an attachable asset exists, securing the return of misappropriated assets, identifying and securing assets to satisfy a post-judgment award, and informing the determination of whether or not litigation is viable in the first instance.
We take a creative approach to what constitutes an asset and broaden the definition well beyond real estate and company ownership to include escrow accounts, accounts receivables, payments of duties and royalties, investments, artwork, joint ventures, and related business entities. Decades of experience and current knowledge of the legal mechanisms in dozens of jurisdictions position us strongly to arm our clients with a unique and robust asset recovery strategy.
We support our clients throughout the process of asset tracing and recovery: beginning with determining the overall extent and location of subjects’ assets up to and including the attachment of those assets once legal proceedings are initiated.
Our Methodical Approach
Working closely with legal counsel we devise an enforcement strategy that prioritizes the jurisdictions where enforcement efforts will be made. We classify assets within each jurisdiction as more or less desirable, based on the legal tools available in each jurisdiction, the perceived ease of or potential hurdles to attachment, and their value. We then proceed with conducting targeted inquiries to obtain evidence of the ownership of those assets that will be pursued. K2 Integrity may expand its inquiries to identify and include additional assets in the “friendly jurisdictions” selected for the pursuit.
Our Experience
K2 Integrity was engaged by a corporate client seeking to identify assets to enforce an investment arbitration award against an Eastern European state, following the expropriation of a series of assets in that state. K2 Integrity conducted an extensive investigation and identified assets in several jurisdictions, including ships, cargoes, and property valued in excess of €1 billion, against which the award was successfully enforced.
Members of the K2 Integrity team were engaged to enforce a $400 million arbitration award against a Caribbean state. The team identified and obtained freezing orders on $90 million of assets (mostly in Europe), which prompted the parties to negotiate a settlement in the form of a repayment schedule for the outstanding debt.
An international hedge fund tapped K2 Integrity to assist it in the enforcement of a judgment against a South American state that had defaulted on its debt. The team identified a series of assets held around the world, culminating in the seizure of naval vessels in an African port.
K2 Integrity was retained to identify and recover assets held outside of Russia by a former Russian fund manager who defrauded a high-net-worth individual. We conducted a comprehensive review and analysis of the structures used by the manager to siphon in excess of $350 million in funds out of the client’s company. Through a combination of intelligence gathering and an analysis of connections between offshore entities identified, we were able to obtain evidence of the fraud and identify (and assist in the recovery of) assets held by the subject in the UK, Jersey, and Switzerland.