Kroll Inc.

Kroll

Type	Private
Industry	Corporate Investigation Risk Consulting
Founded	1972
Headquarters	New York City , United States
Number of locations	70
Key people	Noah Gottdiener, Executive Chairman, Jacob Silverman, Chief Executive Officer
Revenue	$1 billion (2007) [1]
Number of employees	5,000
Website	www.kroll.com

Kroll is a corporate investigations and risk consulting firm based in New York City.^[2] It was established in 1972.

History[]

Kroll was founded in 1972 by Jules Kroll as a consultant to corporate purchasing departments.^[3]

Kroll began its line of investigative work in the financial sector in the 1980s, when corporations in New York City approached Kroll to profile investors, suitors and takeover targets, with special attention to any perceived connections to disreputable organizations, suspicious business practices, integrity issues, or corporate malfeasance. In the 1990s, Kroll expanded into forensic accounting, background screening, drug testing, electronic data recovery and market intelligence.^[4]

In June 1993, A.I.G. became a minority shareholder.^[5]

In 1997, Kroll merged with vehicle armoring company O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt. The new entity, The Kroll-O'Gara Company, became a public company listed on NASDAQ as "KROG."^{[citation needed]}

In August 2001, the O’Gara vehicle armoring businesses were sold to Armor Holdings. The company name was changed to Kroll Inc. and its ticker symbol became "KROL."^{[citation needed]}

In 2002, Kroll acquired Kelly McCann's firm Crucible. In September 2008, Crucible was acquired by its management and now operates privately.^[6]Also in 2002, Kroll acquired Zolfo Cooper - who was working on the Enron case at the time - for $153 million.^[7]

In July 2004, Kroll was acquired by professional services firm Marsh & McLennan Companies in a $1.9 billion transaction.^[8]

In June 2008, Jules Kroll left Kroll, Inc, and in 2010 formed Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) and K2 Global Consulting with his son Jeremy.^[9]

In August 2010, Kroll was acquired by Altegrity, Inc. in an all-cash transaction valued at $1.13 billion. Altegrity declared bankruptcy in 2015.^[10]

Kroll was then bought by Corporate Risk Holdings, LLC.^[11]

On October 21, 2016, Carlyle Group-owned LDiscovery acquired Kroll Ontrack for around $410 million,^[12] from which time Kroll Ontrack operated as a separate company.^{[citation needed]} In 2018, Kroll Inc. acquired controversial cybersecurity firm Tiversa.

On March 13, 2018, it was reported that Duff & Phelps Corp. would buy Kroll, Inc.^[13] The transaction was completed on June 4, 2018.^[14] On March 25, 2021, Kroll announced that it had acquired Redscan, a UK based cyber security company.^[15]

Range of operations[]

Background screening[]

Kroll's background screening division provides screening services for areas such as employment, supplier selection, investment placement and institutional admissions. Kroll's Background Screening division also includes the Kroll Fraud Solutions unit, which specializes in identity theft protection and identity restoration services.^[16]

Security consulting[]

Kroll offers consulting services through Kroll Security Group, its Security Consulting and Security Engineering & Design division. These services include threat assessments, vulnerability assessments, physical security surveys, security disaster planning, policy and procedure development, staffing studies, etc.

Social media[]

The company provides background checks on Instagram influencers, using publicly-accessible online information to prevent them being 'cancelled' for problematic or potentially disreputable behaviour (e.g. tweets which includes offensive language or content).^[17]

Historical cases[]

The Heroin Trail case[]

In 1987, in the prominent First Amendment case over The Heroin Trail stories in New York Newsday, attorney Floyd Abrams enlisted Kroll's help to find an eyewitness: "But was it conceivable that we could come up with an eyewitness who could be of help? I called Jules Kroll, the CEO of Kroll Associates, the nation's most acclaimed investigative firm, to ask him if he could inquire, through the extensive range of former law enforcement officials employed by him, whether Karaduman was known to be a drug trafficker in Istanbul."^[18] Two weeks into the trial Kroll produced Faraculah Arras, who was prepared to testify he was involved in one of Karaduman's drug deals. "I was stunned," recalled Abrams.

Abrams used Kroll again in 1998 to investigate claims by CNN's Newsstand documentary that sarin nerve gas had been used in Vietnam in 1970 as part of Operation Tailwind.^[19]

The John Fredriksen oil theft case[]

Kroll assisted in the trial of Norwegian shipping tycoon, John Fredriksen, at the end of the 1980s.^{[citation needed]}

The deal between Brazil and United States[]

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Daniel Dantas, the company in question, André Esteves, Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Dario Messer signed a schedule agreement to privatize Brazilian state-owned companies independent of the government.^[20]

WTC and Sears Tower security[]

Kroll were responsible for revamping security at the World Trade Center after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.^[21][22] They also took on responsibility for security at Chicago's Sears Tower following the September 11, 2001 attacks.^[23] Just prior to the September 11 attacks, Kroll Inc., with the guidance of Jerome Hauer, at the time the Managing director of their Crisis and Consulting Management Group,^[11] hired former FBI special investigator John P. O'Neill,^[24] who specialized in the Al-Qaeda network held responsible for the 1993 bombing, to head the security at the WTC complex. O'Neill died in the attacks.

Capital outflows from the Soviet Union and Russia[]

In March 1992, the Yeltsin government contracted Kroll Associates to track down and find very large sums of money that had been removed from the Soviet Union prior to the August 1991 putsch on the Russian White House.^[25][26] In 1992, First Deputy Prime Minister Yegor Timurovich Gaidar said, "Last year saw large-scale privatization by the nomenklatura, privatization by officials for their own personal benefit."^[27] Gaidar called the Communists and KGB officials criminals and that a "a vigorous search" for the money trails from state-owned capital had flowed abroad virtually unchecked before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1991.^[26] On March 15, 1992, the Russian government froze all capital outflows from Russia.^[26] In April 1992, Kroll Associates began their investigations with Joseph Serio heading the Kroll Associates efforts in Moscow.^[28][a] Also, Joseph Rosetti, the vice chairman of Kroll Associates, was in Moscow to assist.^[26] The Kroll Associates determined that more than $14 billion in 1991 real dollars had been transferred from Switzerland to New York prior to the August 1991 putsch.^[27] Also, the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union along with other government agencies, such as the KGB, had transferred more than $40 billion in 2014 real dollars out of the country.^[30][b] The assets of the Vneshekonombank were frozen during the investigation.^[27] However, numerous transactions occurred to bypass the capital flow restrictions often with the British Barclays Bank in Cyprus acting a money laundering center for public officials from Saint Petersburg and Moscow.^[27][c] According to Valery Makharadze, the government's chief inspector, many joint stock companies were formed to provide an illegal means for capital outflows from Russia, such as the Leningrad Association of Joint Ventures^[d] and KOLO.^[32][27][e] Numerous officials became wealthy Russian oligarchs including numerous former KGB officials, prominent Communists such as Oleg Belyakov and other former Communists who headed the party Central Committee department that dealt with the defense industry, as well as Leonid Kravchenko, who was the former head of the state television and radio company.^[27] Jules Kroll, the head of the Kroll Associates, uncovered hundreds of illicit transactions with massive capital outflows.^[33] This outflow of capital from the Soviet Union and Russia directly contributed to severe economic conditions in Russia during Boris Yeltsin's second term, leading to its collapse, and resulting in the age of Vladimir Putin as the President of Russia.^[25] Kroll investigators stated that they received very little support from Russian authorities.^[34]

Moldovan bank fraud scandal[]

On 28 January 2015, the National Bank of Moldova (NBM) hired Kroll to present its findings from Project Tenor involving Ilan Shor's Shor Holding and the Moldovan bank fraud scandal which was part of the Russian Laundromat.^[35]

See also[]

• ArmorGroup
• Eurasia Group
• Le Beck International
• Pinkerton

Notes[]

References[]

Sources[]

• Belton, Catherine (23 June 2020). Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. ISBN 978-0374238711.

External links[]

• Official website