Vantage provided extensive litigation support to prove that bankruptcy proceedings initiated in a former Soviet country against a major corporation were deliberately engineered to destroy and expropriate the company in question.

Working with an international legal team, Vantage was able to demonstrate the mechanisms of the fraudulent bankruptcy at heart of the matter, assisting the client to pursue legal recourse in a variety of venues and ultimately win multi-hundred million dollar judgments in its favour.

Vantage was retained to conduct a multi-jurisdictional asset-tracing investigation to identify assets of a cargo airline that defaulted on lease payments for Boeing planes, supporting their legal efforts to recover the assets. Due to aerospace bans and the threat of sanctions against Russian companies, the cargo group ceased operations in Western jurisdictions.

Using public and non-public information, Vantage identified assets, including planes, warehouses, and debts owed by third parties, in addition to a concerted effort by the cargo group to move the entirety of the financial assets to non-European jurisdictions.

Vantage worked with the Client’s legal team to secure a freezing order in Ireland worth USD 406 million. Our investigative findings were submitted as witness testimony in the legal proceedings that helped to secure the freezing order.

Vantage was retained by the former minority shareholders of an Eastern European industrial company, who were pushed out by a much larger industrial player that successfully took over the client’s company while pushing out the client and leaving significant debt obligations unpaid.

The client - under the reasoned belief that they will be unable to successfully litigate in local courts as a result of pressure from the opponent - hired Vantage, alongside legal and lobbyist advisors, to implement a strategy for legal recourse in international legal venues.

Vantage has worked closely with the client and the wider team of international advisors, in order to (i) conduct investigative work proving that the industrial conglomerate that took over the client’s company did so inappropriately by using pressure points available to it, (ii) profile the industrial conglomerate in order to establish precedent that inappropriately / illegally taking over weaker partner companies is a standard modus operandi for the industrial conglomerate in question and (iii) guide the client and the wider team of advisors in a legal and public relations strategy in order to seek proper recourse and compensation in enforcement friendly jurisdictions. Vantage continues to advise the client.

Vantage was retained by an international industrial holding to investigate a senior executive in one of its national offices suspected of engaging in fraudulent transactions with counter-parties in which he secretly held a financial interest.

Vantage confirmed the client’s suspicions and was also able to demonstrate that the senior executive in question engineered the dismissal of other senior staff who were suspicious of the transactions in order to prevent them from further discovering and exposing the fraud.

Our findings allowed the client to successfully pursue legal claims against the former executive and recover damages caused by his actions.

A bank involved in the restructuring of a large fast-moving consumer goods group in Central Europe, instructed us to investigate a suspected conspiracy aimed at preventing the completion of a deal that would see the bank take over one of the group’s key assets.

We undertook to map out the relationships between a number of parties – including local and national politicians, competitors, government agencies, lobbyists and other stakeholders – to investigate claims that certain parties were acting together to frustrate the finalisation of the deal.

This mapping exercise involved extensive online research, surveillance of the key subjects, and source inquiries with current and former politicians; industry commentators and analysts; journalists; current and former government employees and other individuals well-placed to provide commentary on the relationships under scrutiny.

Our investigation highlighted certain alliances and affiliations between key stakeholders, unbeknownst to the client, that were colluding to prevent the completion of the deal.

Vantage was hired to conduct an asset tracing investigation of two UHNWIs who were the majority owners of a Latin American commodities trading firm. The individuals had sold one of their units to a large agriculture trader who quickly uncovered egregious financial irregularities at the firm that amounted to over USD 150 million, thus significantly decreasing the value of the operation they had purchased.

Vantage (i) conducted a thorough review of assets held by the targets, their wives and children in various jurisdictions including Argentina, Uruguay, the Netherlands and the UK; (ii) approached sources who had previously worked closely with the individuals and who had insight into their assets and information regarding the company’s operations; and (iii) developed sources close to the family who identified the family’s travel patterns and vacation destinations in order to uncover additional assets.

Vantage successfully identified significant assets held by the individuals’ families including large farmlands in Argentina and Uruguay, numerous luxury properties and vacation homes in various jurisdictions, as well as an apartment block owned by a family member in an upscale neighbourhood in Buenos Aires.

We were instructed by an AIM-listed telecommunications company to investigate suspected collusion between financial bloggers and investment funds who were alleged to have coordinated an attack on the client’s share price which involved amassing short positions prior to the publication of damaging information about one of the client’s former executives.

Our investigation found that a certain financial blogger was at the forefront of an effort to intentionally and strategically publicize information about the client that was designed to have the most significant negative impact on the client’s stock price.

Through research and extensive covert inquiries with industry sources, we confirmed the relationship between the financial blogger and one particular investment fund – which held shares in the client company and was one of the first funds to adopt a short position – which was also found to be involved in gathering and disseminating damaging information about the client.

Vantage was retained by an international trade finance institution to assist in enforcing a judgment against a debtor who defaulted on a multimillion dollar commodity trading loan. Vantage found that the debtor had shifted assets in a variety of jurisdictions into the names of close relatives, making it nearly impossible to enforce against those assets.

As a result, we worked with the client to successfully implement a negotiation strategy in support of a settlement, relying on intelligence identified during the course of the investigation about the debtor’s indirectly-held assets.

Vantage proved specific instances of judicial corruption in an Eastern European country involving an aggrieved foreign investor, obtaining evidence through extensive human source interviews and sophisticated forensic analysis of electronic data provided by some of the sources.

We subsequently presented the evidence to both judicial and diplomatic venues in support of the client, ultimately leading to the client obtaining a favorable decision in international arbitration.