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“Unparalleled expertise in global public record Due Diligence”

Garancie helps the world’s leading companies perform Public Record Due Diligence quickly and cost effectively around the globe. We help our clients risk-check individuals and companies in over 165 countries and territories in a way that is not achievable by any automated due diligence platforms on the market. Whether it’s offshore, emerging or mature markets, we have them all covered.

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Explore us

WHO WE ARE

Global. Efficient. Thorough.

“Garancie is a market leading provider of public record due diligence to the world’s largest financial institutions, corporates and professional services firms.”

Established in 2009 Garancie was one of the first companies to establish an accurate and efficient methodology to help companies carry out large-scale client and vendor due diligence, in  a way that was transparent, legal, highly reliable and cost-effective.

We have completed over 10,000 investigative and due diligence assignments in over 165 countries and we look forward to helping your organisation manage its reputational and regulatory risks.

Whether it is enterprise-wide compliance screening or remediation, pre-deal due diligence or a component of a complex investigation, we can help you cover all the relevant bases of Public Record research, no matter the language or the country in question.

Our management

Clark

Clark
Hedley Clark
Managing Director

Hedley is the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Garancie, and is also the owner and principal of Credence Background Screening, a sister company (credence.co.uk).

Hedley is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has over thirty years of experience in senior roles across a number of industries. Over the last twenty years, Hedley has worked in the background screening and investigations sector, having run and grown two companies, prior to establishing Garancie and Credence.

Varga

Varga
Barnabas Varga
Operations Director

Barnabas is the Operations Director and Co-Founder of Garancie. Prior to establishing Garancie Barnabas was a senior member of the EMEA research team at a specialist Enhanced Due Diligence company. Before embarking on a career in Due Diligence Barnabas was a freelance journalist and entrepreneur. Speaking five languages, Barnabas applies his expertise to managing the research team and overseeing the quality of the research product. Barni regularly presents at industry forums on Public Record Due Diligence.

Our Services

Client tailored, transparent risk management

We understand that the due diligence needs of our clients differ. We aim to tailor our searches to your individual requirements by picking the components that matter most to your organization. Broadly, our services fall into three categories – Light Touch Due Diligence, Enhanced Due Diligence and Custom research for our investigations focused clients.

'Light Touch Due Diligence' at Garancie is anything but. Designed for large scale on-boarding or remediation initiatives, our clients are able to take advantage of our world-class research methodology, which uses only Primary Source data to validate the details of companies and individuals around the world. Unlike our competitors, Garancie does not rely on secondary data, purchased from credit agencies and company data aggregators. We always source and corroborate information received from our clients in original government registries. So whether it is confirmation of company registration in Hong Kong, or the ownership of a partnership in Bavaria, you always get the official registry trail. No compromises, and no shortcuts.

Whilst this takes a little more effort than going to a single database, Garancie’s approach eliminate data quality risk, which can miss a change in the management or ownership of a company, due to the time lag and data quality issues which are present in secondary data aggregators. Our approach also means, that should things go wrong, you can be sure that your document trail is audit and regulator proof.

In 'Light Touch Due Diligence', we apply a “lean” search methodology, which focuses only on specific risk points, allowing you to meet your compliance needs quickly and cost effectively, without cutting corners.

Whilst the set of checks we can perform will differ depending on the type of disclosures that are required by law in any given territory, you can broadly expect to see:

  • Company Registration details;
  • Directors and Shareholders of a legal vehicle;
  • Litigation checks (defendant only in "Light Touch Due Diligence");
  • Regulatory checks for regulated companies;
  • Tax Debtor and Bankruptcy checks;
  • Media and internet research in English and local languages (in "Light Touch Due Diligence", based on financial crime “Red Flags” searching methodology);
  • OFAC, EU and local governmental Sanctions Lists;
  • Political Exposure checks;
  • Criminal Record and Terrorist Group Membership.

Garancie prides itself on a market-leading Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) research methodology. We provides our clients with a fully-cited, auditable Due Diligence overview of all the relevant governmental disclosures relating to companies and individuals in the countries where our searches are done. Our media and internet research is always conducted in both English and whatever additional languages are required in each case. We will always obtain disclosure confirmation, be it regulatory, legal or financial, from the original government body overseeing the data.

Because we don’t resell secondary database information, our Enhanced Due Diligence reports meet the absolute highest standard of auditability, giving our clients total piece of mind about their regulatory and reputational risk.

Garancie's "Enhanced Due Diligence" methodology expands on Light Touch Due Diligence to include more thorough regulatory, financial and legal due diligence, going beyond the “Red Flags”, as well as a fully comprehensive Media and Internet search.

The exact searches we can perform may differ by country, based on the legal disclosure requirements in each jurisdiction. With EDD, there is no one size fits all, and Garancie will always maximise research capabilities in each case.

  • Company Registration details;
  • Directors and Shareholders of a legal vehicle and Ultimate Beneficial Ownership, where available;
  • Litigation checks (defendant, respondent and third party);
  • Regulatory checks for regulated companies, including licenses, fines and disbarment information;
  • Tax Debtor and Bankruptcy checks for legal and physical subjects;
  • Comprehensive Media and internet research in English and other relevant local languages;
  • OFAC, EU and local governmental Sanctions Lists;
  • Political Exposure, including indirect and overt;
  • Criminal Record and Terrorist Group Membership.

Please get in touch if you have any questions about the precise scope you can expect in a given country. We will be happy to advise

As experts in Primary Source data acquisition, Garancie is often approached by clients to assist in assignments that range from tracing and returning assets to fraud victims, supporting complex investigations, assisting expert witnesses and lawyers, and other situations where a documentary trail is a requisite to serve as evidence in legal proceedings.

We can help to piece together links between companies, people, advisors, and locations, based on publicly made disclosures in the most unexpected domains and the most difficult of jurisdictions. Conversely, public disclosure documents and registry entries can also help defence teams to piece together a case of reasonable doubt against the prosecution or against another side of a legal dispute.

Whether it is fraud related asset recovery, other asset tracing, matrimonial or commercial disputes, Garancie will be glad to discuss with you the capabilities of public record searches based on your individual circumstances.

"Did you know that Garancie built its own Luxembourg Directorship checks database? We collected hundreds of thousands of documents, company announcements covering over 25 years. This service has been available to our clients for many years and it has helped fraud investigators to uncover assets in Luxembourg and in other jurisdictions.”

Accurate and complete information provided by our global research capability no matter the subject, industry or jurisdiction. We are here to assist you.

 Company checks

Sometimes we are required by law to engage a lawyer or a registering agent to obtain company details and to ensure that we have the most accurate and up to date details. Sometimes we obtain shareholder details from a different agency than the one where the company is registered. Sometimes we apply to a Court with jurisdiction over company registration. There are no shortcuts to doing this properly. Garancie has over a decade of experience in deciphering the intricacies of the Corporate Due Diligence process in over 165 countries. There is no single database in the world that is able to replace or replicate the level of accuracy and transparency that Garancie’s Due Diligence process is able to achieve for our clients. Period.

 Checks for Individuals

Garancie’s checks for individuals are representative of the legal and technical disclosure environments of each of the countries in which we work. At the very least, we are often able to perform Regulatory, Litigation and Bankruptcy checks, as well as the more usual corporate Shareholder and Directorship checks. In certain countries other details are disclosed publicly, such as civil penalties, political affiliations, participation in elections, military service and much more. In each case we will search all the disclosures that are made public to get a better overall perspective on a person’s background or to highlight risks. Where available and relevant, we can confirm personal licensing or check for disbarment from a licensed profession. All our research is then further enhanced and corroborated by thorough Media and Internet research in the relevant local language, as well as in English.

Litigation, Bankruptcy and Regulatory checks

Depending on whether we perform a Light Touch or Enhanced Due diligence, we can get a view on either just negative legal outcomes relating to our client’s subject, or a broader view of the subject's involvement in civil litigation. We will perform Bankruptcy and Company Insolvency checks where these are available, as well as tax debt status, director disqualifications and any negative actions by the authorities involved in financial and professional regulation of the subject.

Media and Internet searches

Information gathered through open media and internet searches can produce some of the most illuminating insights on a subject in the course of a Due Diligence exercise.  However, in an era of “fake news”, it can also throw up some of the biggest challenges for risk interpretation. The absence of barriers to publication in many media outlets, and the growth of agenda-biased media sources can generate “Red Flags” on a company or an individual that may have little basis in reality. All levels of Garancie’s Due Diligence process cover both open source and subscription media sources, with “Red Flag” filters applied for Light Touch Due Diligence. In addition to English language, research is also conducted in the local languages or dialects by a specialist in that jurisdiction. Our local analysts are extremely knowledgeable in the sources they access most often, and in many cases can help to put a context to the source from which a negative news report originates. In addition, insights from Garancie's Country Risk reports can further contextualise “Red Flags” based on factors relating to media independence, giving you better tools to interpret risk.

Political Exposure

Unrelenting corruption involving Politically Exposed Persons (or PEPs) and those connected with them represent some of the highest financial crime compliance risks for our clients. Many organisations now utilise well known databases, which aggregate and resell information in relation to some of the highest profile PEPs around the world. At Garancie we approach the risk associated with PEPs more broadly, and frequently find affiliations with PEPs, which database searches alone miss out. In some countries we are able to utilise electoral commission candidate lists. Elsewhere we can gain valuable data from disclosures made by PEPs, which are connected with holding public office. Company records and internet searches can further disclose family connections to a PEP, which can impact the impartiality of a subject. At Garancie we understand that political exposure is more complex and more fluid than a simple database check may make it seem, and we strive to cover many more bases to give our clients peace of mind. 

Sanctions and Serious Crime checks

Financial Sanctions are becoming an increasingly popular tool of governance not only for the traditional big players, like the EU, the US and the UN, but increasingly for smaller economies as well. The task of complying with the various regimes has become a truly global undertaking, and the risk of getting caught up in sanctions evasion has grown proportionately. Whilst Sanctions database searches remain a staple of compliance work, Garancie’s approach to Sanctions checks always includes lists local to a country or territory, typically managed by the Financial Regulator or the Ministry of Justice. Indeed, it is lists of countries with the least developed regulatory climates, which, in our experience, are most likely to be excluded from global databases, leaving clients vulnerable. And because we go the extra mile, we additionally check lists involving “Most Wanted” organised and violent criminals, and terrorist organisations, which are made public by in-country police bodies and Ministries of Interior.

Consensual checks

The new European General Data Protection Regulations, or GDPR, which became enforceable in 2018, have signalled a new era in the way personal data can be obtained, processed and held. Consensual checks, which have previously given a wide remit to obtaining employment, educational, credit and criminal information on an individual must now be handled with much more care to remain within the law. Garancie has been conducting Consensual checks for clients for many years, and we have evolved our consent agreements to ensure that we meet our clients' requirements without compromising on the end subject's right to privacy.

Additional research capabilities

Outside our “bread and butter” Due Diligence work, sometimes our clients need something a little different. In fraud and counterfeit investigations, we can help in making test purchases, or in conducting site visits to confirm or alleviate client concerns. We have also been able to assist in tracing assets such as property, boats, planes and artwork and in individual cases have sought to make discreet source enquiries to get additional details relevant to our clients. Whatever the search enquiries, Garancie is ready to help.

Get in touch

+44 1732 906 630

Garancie Ltd
160 London Road
Sevenoaks, Kent
TN13 1BT
United Kingdom

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