Private investigations

London’s Spy Industry Thrives in Private Sector

Private intelligence companies are part of a booming business in London and the British government complains it is having trouble retaining talented agents who are being drawn by high salaries and more growth opportunities in a blossoming industry estimated to be worth $19 billion.

“Our mission is to fill a gap of knowledge or information in any situation,” said Patrick Grayson, founder and CEO of GPW, a respected mid-sized London intelligence firm. “There’s always something people should or could know in addition to what they do know. Our job is to answer that question. To fill that gap in knowledge.” 

With legal firms as their key clients, Gray’s company has set up shop on London’s Chancery Lane in the heart of the city’s legal district, where solicitors and judges dressed in the traditional court garb that includes white wigs and black robes can be seen walking between the courts and their offices in the medieval Inner Temple area. 

Private investigations

Former Top U.K. Spy Now Works for Team Putin—and a Mobbed-Up Russian Lawyer

In his MI6 days, Fulton reportedly had been posted in East Berlin, Saigon and New York. He had served as “head of station” in Washington, D.C., and at the peak of his career he was the sixth most powerful official in the organization, according to The Herald. In 1992, the paper reported, Fulton became the security officer who headed up European operations: “He was one of the MI6 chiefs handed the plans to kill Serb President Slobodan Milosevic.”

Fulton currently chairs GPW & Co., a private investigations firm based in London. Unmentioned by Sokolov or any other media outlets covering “The Browder Effect” is the fact that GPW & Co. also has been subcontracted by the American white-shoe law firm Debevoise & Plimpton on behalf of its client Andrey Pavlov.

Pavlov is none other than the lawyer of the Klyuev Group. He has spent a small fortune in the United Kingdom waging a PR counteroffensive against accusations made by Browder against him, mainly to keep his name off any impending Magnitsky legislation in Europe. So far, he’s had little success: a nonbinding European parliamentary resolution, urging the EU’s Council of Minister—the policy-making body in Brussels—to sanction Klyuev Group members including Pavlov, was passed in April 2014.

Private investigations

The 'spy' who seduces men

For almost two years now, the 22-year-old has been leading a double life.
Angel (not her real name) is an administrative assistant by day.
But it is her secret life as a honey trapper that makes life exciting.
She is paid by her clients to seduce their cheating spouses and sabotage their extramarital affair.
"It is exciting and challenging. I treat it as a form of undercover task," says Angel, who cannot be identified for fear of reprisal attacks.
Honey trapping helps her pay the bills.