ACIC’s Due Diligence ideology

Stemming from our immigration and citizenship practice heritage, we understand the importance of knowing your client. We also understand the sacred significance of privacy and discretion.

Be it an immigration department seeking to admit a foreign national to its territory, or a bank seeking to accept a new high net worth client, or company seeking to acquire or merge with another business, our Due Diligence doctrine utilizes the ethos of ACIC at every corner.

The pillars of our due diligence and enhanced due diligence batteries:

• Respecting the privacy and confidentiality of the person(s) or entities being investigated.
   

ACIC’s practices are carefully tuned to pay close attention to individuals and corporates’ privacy. We only perform our investigative tasks in utter compliance with internationally and locally acceptable laws, codes, and privacy and confidentiality principles and laws. If no such laws are in force in the jurisdiction where the service is being requested, we default North American and European principles with respect to Privacy and confidentiality.

• Professional Skepticism; our service is intended to make available to the relevant authority / entity, reliable, factual and above all impartial data for an informed decision to be made. Our findings, positive or negative as they may be, are always based on concrete facts and profoundly substantiated views.

Professional Skepticism for Individuals;

An immigration department is interested in accepting an applicant more-so than finding reasons to refuse them; hence, if we provide evidence that an applicant is eligible under the criteria they are being investigated, our positive view of said applicant will assist the relevant department in meeting its mandate.

Professional Skepticism for banks clients;

In the case of businesses and banks; if a bank seeks a due diligence or an enhanced due diligence report on an individual seeking to open an account is a request being tendered for the purpose of facilitating the bank’s business and keeping out those who do not meet the bank’s KYC or compliance principles. ACIC understands both the business and the regulatory side of the equation. Our reports are always based on a fine balance between the two opposing forces.

Professional Skepticism for business mergers and acquisitions;

The norms of the country where the person or the entity are domiciled are always taken into consideration before a Due Diligence or an Enhanced Due Diligence commences. Our clients are always furnished with a road map of the services to be rendered and where the legitimacy of each milestone of the investigation process is profoundly outlined.

Business mergers and acquisitions can be a tricky transaction, as numbers manipulations are often observed. Our business analysts and chartered accountants are trained and mandated to:

1. Take into consideration the business norms where the company is domiciled
    
2. Practice caution when reviewing financial records and employ an open, yet reasonably conservative eye, when judging certain business practices and transactions.

• We audit our work; just before our due diligence or enhanced due diligence report is made available to our client, a senior auditor who had no role in the due diligence process evaluates the report to ensure that all of the above principles were employed in populating the report.

  Our staff is constantly updated on new laws, regulations, principles, policies and the norms of any country we render services in.

  We do understand that a poorly prepared due diligence or enhanced due diligence report can be problematic for our client and can have adverse effects such as litigation challenges and other types of reputational damages. We therefore, constantly, educate our staff on the importance of strictly abiding by the concepts ACIC’s ideology in rendering this service.

   

• We are continuously evolving; our due diligence and enhanced due diligence batteries are continuously evolving. We constantly employ new talent to help us build our capacity on the field and at the back office. Concerted efforts are always utilized in perfecting our service and quickly detecting and eliminating any vulnerabilities.

The Due Diligence team at ACIC

The team consists of sanctioned field operatives and supervisors, in-house field control operatives and supervisors, legal and financial analysts. Depending on the purpose of the due diligence or the enhanced due diligence being sought, experts from different disciplines, such as immigration, finance and banking, medical, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, and other sectors maybe called in for opinionating certain findings.

Our team undergoes daily and weekly briefs and de-briefs to discuss complex cases and seek guidance from senior staff.

Who our clients are

Our clients are mainly immigration and citizenship departments, banks, financial institutions and fund management firms, chiefs of finance at corporations seeking mergers or acquisitions. ACIC does not render this service to individuals.

Conflict of interest

ACIC runs a thorough and a well-rounded “conflict check” prior to onboarding any client. We decline to serve should a conflict of interest, that may impair our ability to discharge our services be detected.