Who are Kroll, the investigators brought in to run rule over National Children’s Hospital?

Kroll is one of the world’s largest corporate-intelligence companies, hired by multinationals and governments alike.

The firm has a complicated corporate backstory and has been the subject of many buyouts along the way, but the brand itself, Kroll Inc, was founded in 1972 by Jules Kroll, one of the world’s most famous private detectives.

While Jules Kroll left the company in 2008, his own clients included aggrieved governments and major corporations. The current owner, however, is a risk-management firm called Duff & Phelps, which has rebranded entirely as Kroll.

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The company has a highly contentious history, having investigated cases that it has been more than happy to publicise while being mired in controversy in other instances.

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For example, Kroll Inc has boasted about finding millions that former president Ferdinand Marcos stole from the Philippines and has said it tracked billions skimmed from Iraqi oil profits by Saddam Hussein.

More controversial has been Kroll’s involvement with Harvey Weinstein. According to The New Yorker, after he set out to suppress allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted numerous women, Weinstein hired several companies including Kroll. The publication reported that Weinstein’s relationship with Kroll dated back years.

Giving an example of how this suppression happened, the publication said that after Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, an Italian model, accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting her in 2015, she reached a settlement with Weinstein that required her to surrender all her personal devices to Kroll. This was so that they could be wiped of evidence of a conversation in which Weinstein admitted to groping her.

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Going back further, to 1991, Jules Kroll, who had not yet left the company, set off a political firestorm when he told the media that his investigators had discovered that Saddam Hussein and his family had been skimming 5 per cent of Iraq’s oil revenues. Kroll went on to reveal details of assets belonging to Hussein.

In October 2019, Kroll, as a division of Duff and Phelps, announced that it was expanding to Ireland. In a post about the expansion on the company website, they wrote that they were taking the decision in response to increased demand for services like forensic accounting investigations, asset searches, cyber investigations and business intelligence from companies, law firms and financial institutions. The company said it planned to assist clients in managing “complex problems including disputes and litigation, sanctions breaches, fraud and corruption, leaks of information and asset searches”.

A spokeswoman for the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board (NPHDB) said last night that Kroll’s role is to “provide independent support to the NPHDB, which includes site monitoring, programme assessment and review of time-related claims as part of the wider dispute resolution process under, and in connection with, the construction contract”.