How an asset search begins

• Precise identification of the debtor: an individual or a company, full details, known variants of the spelling of the name.
• The basis of the claim: a contract, a court decision, a promissory note, a court order.
• Chronology: when the obligation arose, when payments stopped, what happened next.
• Everything known about connections: relatives, partners, representatives, former companies.
• Geography: the countries where the debtor lived, did business or owned property.

First the initial picture is recorded: what is known reliably and what is the client's assumption. These two are regularly confused, and checking someone else's assumptions as facts costs time.

Then comes work by jurisdiction. The availability of data differs radically: in one place the property register is open, in another it is entirely closed, in a third it is available on request with justification. This determines both the timeframes and the realism of the task.

In parallel, the surrounding circle is checked. Property registered to someone other than the debtor is found through connections, not through a direct search by his name.

The result is brought together into a picture: what has been found, where, in whose name it is registered, from what date, and to what extent it is confirmed.

The report answers the question of whether there is any point in further action and in what direction to take it. Sometimes the honest answer is that no property available for recovery has been found and continuing the work is not advisable.

Such an answer also costs money, but it saves substantially more than it costs: litigation against a debtor with no assets is paid for in full by the client and produces nothing.

• Asset tracing
• Crypto asset tracing
• Checking money and financial flows

• How debtors move assets out and what this changes for the creditor - 7 minutes.