My Chat with Daniel Greenberg
By Ajay Shamdasani, host, Regulatory Ramblings Podcasts *
Recently, I had an engaging discussion with Daniel Greenberg on HKU Law’s Regulatory Ramblings podcast episode #46 (Investigative Due Diligence and Why It Matters?)** on why investigative due diligence matters. Daniel is the founder, president, and lead investigator of Greenberg Corporate Intelligence, a Washington, DC-based boutique investigations firm.
The term ‘due diligence’ has been so overused in the colloquial vernacular in recent decades that what was once a term of art that meant something specific in the field of corporate investigations, risk management and business intelligence is now a quick, easy, lazy shorthand way of describing anything from a light, perfunctory background check using basic desk research conducted by non-specialist staff in developing world call centers to full blown investigations by globally known firms.
Indeed, throwing around terms such as customer due diligence (CDD) and enhanced due diligence (EDD) does not help clarify matters. Against such a backdrop, I appreciated Daniel’s dispelling some of the lingering misconceptions about what due diligence actually involves. As we discussed, it would behoove the world’s largest banking and financial institutions and multinational corporations – and the pricey external consultants they often hire when a scandal or breach emerges – to look at due diligence as something that transcends background checks and as something that is meant to ensure comprehensive accountability.
Most corporate investigators use public records and open-source intelligence. Certainly, technology can help and as Daniel points out, moving forward, mastering Google, as well as the ever-growing number of generative artificial intelligence tools will prove to be integral to such work – provided they are used correctly and with a sense of focus and discernment. To put it another way, AI will not render veteran investigators obsolete because there can be no substitute for skills developed over a lifetime, such as having a sense of context and being able to read people.
To quote US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: “the life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.”
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