The Big Read
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“ The combination of forensic cyber capabilities, global data access, and experienced investigators is what makes it possible to build an asset picture that is not only comprehensive but also evidentially sound.
too late. Today, specialist platforms and workflows can query and crossreference large volumes of lawful data across jurisdictions, company and land registries, litigation and insolvency records, sanctions and PEP lists, trade and shipping indicators, and other open-source and subscription datasets. Work that once took weeks of manual research can often be triaged in hours, with results organised to make corporate structures and asset connections easier to interrogate.
Alongside these digital tools, effective asset tracing retains an irreplaceable human dimension. In-country verification, human source networks, and direct investigative presence matter enormously in jurisdictions where official records are incomplete, unreliable, or inaccessible to external investigators. The combination of forensic cyber capabilities, global data access, and experienced investigators is what makes it possible to build an asset picture that is not only comprehensive but also evidentially sound.
In practice, this also means working within the constraints of data protection and local laws, preserving a clear audit trail, and presenting findings in a form that legal teams can deploy in witness evidence and submissions.
Reports produced to legally admissible standards, drawing on lawfully obtained sources, can be placed directly before courts without the complications that arise from internet scraping, data theft or hacking.
What the case record shows
The value of this approach is easiest to see in outcomes. The following examples are anonymised but representative of matters where early intelligence materially changed strategy:
• In a fraud matter involving approximately $ 10m, early tracing work identified a cross-border footprint and helped locate the key individual in the United States within weeks. The intelligence position supported a negotiated resolution and recovery.
• In a counterfeit-goods investigation, the client began with minimal identifiers. Pre-action profiling linked the activity to a trading entity with significant scale( estimated valuation in the hundreds of millions), informing both enforcement options and the litigation approach.
• In a pre-discovery investigation linked to a suspected large-scale scheme, an initial sprint mapped a network of property interests( in excess of $ 200m) in a matter of days, allowing the legal team to move quickly on interim protection and forum strategy.
The common thread is speed: when intelligence is integrated early, legal teams can make better decisions about whether to sue, where to sue, and how to preserve a realistic path to recovery.
The question for legal teams
The practical question for law firms and in-house legal teams is not whether asset tracing is useful. It is when it becomes part of the case strategy, and whether the team is prepared to act quickly. Commissioning pre-action intelligence is low-cost relative to complex litigation, but it can materially affect settlement leverage, interim remedy applications, and the ultimate viability of enforcement. The cases where recovery fails most completely are often those where the asset picture was not tested until it was too late to act on it.
The standard is shifting. The firms that incorporate intelligence-led asset tracing into the early stages, act quickly, act to an admissible standard, and act collaboratively when building cases are consistently delivering better outcomes for their clients.
For disputes where recovery matters, the simplest shift is procedural: build an asset-and-structures view before issue( or at least at the earliest pre-action stage), then align pleadings, forum choices, and interim relief strategy to what the intelligence shows.
Martin Dubbey is the founder and chief executive of Harod Associates
www. harodassociates. com