The corporate investigations industry is by its very nature a secretive business, but it has recently and reluctantly come out of the shadows.

Last year a private spy, Christopher Steele, was forced to flee his home, following the leak of a dossier he had compiled on President Donald Trump. The former MI6 Russia hand had started his own security firm, Orbis Intelligence and had compiled an account of collusion between the Kremlin and Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump has repeatedly denied any such collusion. Steele, for his part, was recently reported as saying that he believed 70-90% of what was in the dossier was accurate. Then, in early December 2017, the Intercept reported that President Trump is considering creating a global network of private spies, due to his much-vaunted distrust of the Central Intelligence Agency and the larger US intelligence network. The industry is in demand.

So the new revelations from private security firms C2I and Inkerman are yet more unwelcome attention on an industry which now wants to appear both professional and bland. The industry may want to present itself as just another service industry, much like marketing or public relations, offering services such as profiling potential directors for a new company, checking corporate supply chains for any rogue elements, or uncovering white collar fraud. However, it is, in truth, different. One key distinguishing factor is that corporate investigations firm are often staffed and run by former spies and veterans of special forces, even if they work alongside graduates, accountants and lawyers.

Some of the companies even have private military arms – a legacy of hoovering up contracts in post-invasion Iraq or protecting shipping against Somali pirate gangs. Other still have veterans of the nervous ‘90s in Russia, where blue chip businesses vied with mafia gangs for control of vast swathes of natural resources. It is an industry which could be said, quite literally, to have skeletons in its closet.