Big brother business

SERVICES: Surveillance services are gaining business globally, and World Check senses opportunity in India.

Somebody's watching you. Anything fishy in your life, be it an obscene amount of money being transferred to your bank account, or a company you've formed under your brother's name, could put you even closer under the scanner.

Not everybody is under scrutiny, but nobody can get away with small deceptions for much longer. Or so says World Check, which has been in the business of keeping a watch on people with hazy backgrounds.

It has just begun its Indian venture. "Being such a huge country," says David Leppan, CEO, World Check, "the chances of risks and frauds in India are higher "" and if asked to, we will keep a check on people involved in it."

The company has already been signed up by a couple of foreign banks operating in India and keen on taking their know-your-customer commitments right down to intricate details, to track some customers.

World Check has a database of about half a million people, and serves such needs as financial compliance, anti-money laundering programmes, detection of politically compromised deals, enhanced due diligence, fraud prevention, government intelligence and enforcement, and even identity authentication, background screening and risk-reduction practices.

The database is available online as well as offline, though the offline one is not used by many companies. Says Leppan, "Banks and financial institutions have an obligation to 'know' their clients, and the authorities in India have started cracking down on errant banks and financial institutions."

But how is intelligence gathered on people?

The company has teams of multi-lingual researchers located around the world that methodically scour and monitor thousands of public sources, including government and police records, as well as the national and international media.

This open source information is used to create highly structured profiles on terrorists, fraudsters, narcotics traffickers, shell banks and organised crime rings, plus many other kinds of bad guys and bad gangs. Profiles are then linked to reveal relationship networks between family members and associates.

Leppan says that the main suspect of the Bali bombings in 2003 was on World Check's suspicion list four months before the event happened. There are several such suspects on whom World Check claims to have a lot of dope.

Says Leppan "A politician may not be corrupt, or might not be doing anything fishy, but his son or nephew might be involved in it, so we keep a check on them as well."

Another opportunity is the BPO sector. "It is always advisable to do a post employment check on people, as the atrition rate is so high that you never what kind of background people might have."

But won't World Check face flak for spying on people? "People who are clean should not be wary of it. The ones who are uncomfortable are the ones we look at." So, don't be caught fidgeting at your desk. Or doing anything else suspicious.

World Check is here.