Lawyer-led due diligence & background intelligence
Who is really on the other side of the deal, before you sign it
A deal is only as sound as what you know about the other side. A counterparty who looks right on paper, a seller whose ownership runs through companies you cannot see behind, a partner whose past does not match the story you were told: the risk is rarely in the documents you are shown, it is in what they leave out. I coordinate a discreet due-diligence and background-intelligence service that establishes who and what you are dealing with, and turns it into something you can act on.
I act as your single point of contact. I set the scope, instruct and supervise the investigations partner, read the findings as a lawyer, and carry them through into the agreement, the condition, or the decision to walk away.
Legally framed
The enquiry is built around the decision in front of you, the contract, the investment or the appointment, not around collecting information for its own sake.
Beyond the surface
A register and a search engine show you what someone is willing to be seen. The work goes to what sits behind that: the real control, the connections, the history.
Decision-ready
Findings come back as a report you can use, to set a price, write a warranty, change a term or decline, not as raw data left for you to interpret.
Where it matters
When the risk is in what you are not being told
Most matters fall into two areas, a transaction you are about to enter and a counterparty you are about to trust, with a check on an appointment or a first read on an opponent arising alongside. Each begins with the same question: who is really behind this, and what has not been said.
Before an acquisition, investment or joint venture
Before you buy a business, take a stake, or commit to a venture, you are relying on what the other side has chosen to disclose. An independent check of the people, the ownership and the history behind the deal shows you the liabilities, the undisclosed connections and the source of the money.
All of it while there is still time to price it, condition it, or walk. What the enquiry finds is read by the same lawyer who will draft the agreement, so it goes straight into the terms.
Choosing a partner, supplier or agent in a difficult market
Where a relationship runs through a jurisdiction with little transparency, the public record tells you almost nothing. Discreet enquiry into reputation, conduct and real ownership lets you see the exposure, reputational, commercial and legal, before your name is attached to it.
The point is not a thick file. It is the few facts that change the answer, found quietly and read in context.
Real estate and cross-border investment
Confirming who actually owns and controls the asset, what sits against it, and who is behind the selling entity.
Fit-and-proper and senior appointments
Checking the background of a director, executive or nominee for the conflicts and history that surface later.
Source of wealth and source of funds
Establishing where the wealth, and the specific money in a transaction, came from, and whether the account holds.
Beneficial ownership behind the structure
Reading past the filed shareholder to the person who really controls a company.
A first read before a dispute
A quick, factual picture of an opponent or a target, to judge whether a claim is worth pursuing.
Ongoing watch on a continuing relationship
Periodic re-checks of a counterparty you stay exposed to, rather than a single report that ages.
How a check on the other side becomes the agreement that protects you
A transaction carries the risk the other side knows about and you do not. The work of due diligence is to close that gap before you are bound, so that what the enquiry finds shapes the deal rather than surfacing after it. The findings translate directly into the document: a representation you ask the seller to stand behind, a warranty that puts the risk where it belongs, a condition that must be met before completion, an indemnity for a specific exposure, or a change in price.
Where something material was hidden or misstated to induce the deal, a contract can be unwound and damages can follow, but that is the harder road, taken after the loss. The cheaper protection is to know first. A documented enquiry, read by the lawyer who will draft the agreement, lets the contract carry the risk the diligence revealed, and lets you decide on facts rather than on the version you were given.
- Verification of the people, the ownership and the corporate history behind the deal
- Findings mapped to representations, warranties, conditions precedent and indemnities
- Source of wealth and source of funds, to the depth a high-value transaction calls for
- A clear basis to price the risk, condition it, or decline the transaction
Who is really across the table, and what they would rather you did not find
The version of a person or a company that reaches you is the one they have arranged for you to see. The filed accounts, the corporate register and the website are a starting point, not the picture. What matters is usually a layer below: who actually controls the company behind the named shareholder, which relationships and past ventures go unmentioned, whether the conduct and reputation match the presentation, and whether there is a history of disputes, enforcement or failure that has been kept out of view.
Reaching that layer takes more than a database search. It takes discreet enquiry through people who know the market, read in context by someone who can tell a real concern from background noise. The aim is the few facts that change your decision, rather than a file of everything that can be found: a connection you were not told about, a source of funds that does not add up, a name that recurs where it should not.
- Real control and beneficial ownership behind the visible structure
- Undisclosed connections, affiliated entities and past ventures
- Reputation, conduct and standing in the relevant market
- A history of disputes, enforcement and prior business failures
Beyond the record
What the enquiry reaches that a register will not
How far the work goes depends on what is at stake. A routine counterparty is checked to one standard; a high-value or high-risk relationship is taken further. In each, the value is in what sits beyond the public record.
A proportionate check
Identity, ownership and the public record confirmed and read together: the company as filed, the people named against it, the obvious connections, and anything already in the open that should give pause. Enough to confirm that what you have been told holds together.
When more is at stake
Applied to high value, an unfamiliar jurisdiction, a politically exposed person, or a structure built to be hard to read. The enquiry goes to real control behind the filings, the source of wealth and funds, undisclosed relationships, reputation tested through discreet enquiry, and any history kept out of view.
Real control, not the named owner
Who directs the company in fact, behind nominees and holding layers.
Source of wealth and funds
Where the money came from, and whether the explanation holds.
Undisclosed relationships
Connections to people and entities the presentation leaves out.
Reputation and conduct
How the person or firm is regarded by those who have dealt with them.
Adverse history
Disputes, enforcement, insolvency and patterns that recur across ventures.
Context a record cannot give
What a name or a structure means in its own market, read by people who operate there.
The work is scoped to the decision in front of you. It is not a search for everything that exists about a person, and it stops where it has answered the question you brought.
How it works
From a name on a deal to a decision you can defend
A clear sequence, so you know what each stage produces and where it leads.
Confidential consultation and scope
We establish the decision you face, what you already know, and what would change your mind. That defines the enquiry and keeps it proportionate.
Defined scope and instruction of the intelligence partner
I confirm the scope in writing and instruct a vetted investigations partner under my supervision.
Documented research and discreet enquiry
Official records, open sources and discreet enquiries through trusted contacts are gathered and corroborated, each step recorded.
A lawyer's report, not raw data
I turn the findings into a report written for the decision: what was found, what it means, and what I would do about it.
The step it unlocks
A signed agreement on better terms, a renegotiation, a walk-away, an appointment confirmed or refused. The enquiry clears the way and I take the matter forward.
The difference
Why this runs through a lawyer, not an investigations firm alone
Information about the other side is worth more when the person reading it is the one who will act on it.
Read for the decision
A finding only matters if you know what to do with it. The enquiry is read by the lawyer who will draft the agreement or advise on the appointment.
Privilege and confidentiality
Work done to advise you on a transaction or a dispute sits within the lawyer-client relationship, with the protection that brings.
One matter, one hand
The enquiry and the legal step are run together, so nothing is lost between an investigator and a lawyer.
A defined purpose
A scope is agreed before any work begins, which keeps the enquiry pointed at your decision and nothing else.
The intelligence partner
In partnership with Bakun Intelligence
The due-diligence and background-intelligence work is carried out by a specialist intelligence firm I instruct and supervise. The scope, the reading of the findings and the legal step remain with my office.
Bakun Intelligence
The intelligence, investigations and risk-advisory division of Bakun Group Ltd
Bakun Intelligence is the intelligence and investigations division of Bakun Group Ltd, a Cyprus company working across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. For the matters on this page, its role is to establish who and what is behind a transaction or a counterparty, and to record how it was found, through official records, open sources and discreet enquiry.
Its due-diligence work covers the verification of executives and shareholders, the mapping of corporate structures and beneficial ownership, the reading of reputation and litigation exposure, the analysis of the business environment around a relationship, and the contextual intelligence that a public record cannot give. Throughout, the firm works to my instruction and under my supervision, so the result reaches me in a form I can act on.
The same firm also supports people tracing and asset tracing, which have their own pages and are noted here only to show the range behind the due-diligence work.
Sebastian Bakun
Founder & Chief Executive, Bakun Group Ltd
Sebastian Bakun has worked in intelligence and investigations internationally since 2012. His career began in Belgium and developed through Poland and assignments across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, before he moved the group's headquarters to Cyprus in 2024. His work spans tracing and locating, cross-border enquiries, due diligence and intelligence support, and, by the nature of the matters, it is conducted discreetly and without disclosing clients or details.
Due diligence & background investigations
Verifying the people, companies and history behind a transaction or a relationship, through official records and discreet enquiry.
Beneficial ownership & corporate intelligence
Mapping the connections between companies and the people who really control them, including layered and offshore structures.
Reputation & exposure analysis
Reading reputation, conduct and litigation exposure, and the context of the market a counterparty operates in.
Selected matters
Matters Bakun Intelligence has handled
A few of the firm's own enquiries, anonymised so that no client or person can be identified. Past matters are not a guarantee of any future result.
Background intelligence before an international transaction
Before a client committed to a high-value transaction, Bakun Intelligence carried out enhanced background intelligence on a prospective partner and its connected companies, and identified connections to entities that had not been disclosed. The client went into the negotiation knowing what it was dealing with.
Checking a partner in a high-risk market
For a relationship that ran through a jurisdiction with little public transparency, Bakun Intelligence assessed the reputation, conduct and commercial standing of a prospective partner, and the risks attached to the local environment. The legal team could weigh the exposure before the client was committed.
Real ownership behind a corporate structure
In a cross-border matter, Bakun Intelligence mapped a set of companies and the people who actually controlled them, behind nominee shareholders and intermediary entities. That gave the legal team a true picture of who was on the other side.
What the work draws on
Where the picture comes together
A reliable read comes from more than one source, weighed against the others. No single record is taken at face value.
Official registers
Company, land, ownership and, where relevant, vessel records, in Cyprus and abroad.
Beneficial-ownership data
What has been filed about who controls a company, treated as a starting point and corroborated, not relied on alone.
Open sources and media
Reporting, public filings and the wider record, read for what recurs and what is conspicuously absent.
Litigation and enforcement records
A history of disputes, judgments and regulatory action, where it can be found.
Discreet enquiry and human sources
Contacts who know a market and can place a name in context, the part no database holds.
Cross-border correspondents
Trusted local contacts and, where needed, local counsel, for records and enquiry in other jurisdictions.
No source is complete on its own. Filed ownership records show what was declared rather than what is true, and open material is partial by nature. For that reason a finding is confirmed across sources before it is relied on.
Discretion & boundaries
How the work is kept, and what it will never be
The value of this service depends as much on its restraint as on its reach.
Strict confidentiality
The matter, the client and the findings are held in confidence. By the nature of the work, neither the partner nor I disclose who has been asked about or what was found.
A defined purpose, agreed first
Every enquiry rests on a scope agreed before it begins, tied to a real decision: a transaction, an appointment, a relationship you are weighing. The scope is fixed at the outset.
The line we do not cross
This service is not corporate espionage, and it is not a way to pressure anyone or to settle scores. It is not available for looking into a rival, a relative or an employee out of curiosity. Enquiries are accepted only through a lawyer, for a defined purpose connected to a genuine decision.
Provider and legal notice
Due-diligence and background-intelligence services are provided by Bakun Group Ltd (HE 462089), through its Bakun Intelligence division, instructed and supervised by my Law Office. This page is informational and does not constitute legal advice on any specific matter. The scope and findings of any enquiry depend on the facts and are agreed in consultation. Every enquiry is accepted only for a defined purpose and is carried out under my instruction and supervision.
Where I can help
Cyprus-qualified, with international matters by referral
I am admitted in Cyprus and handle Cyprus matters directly. For a transaction or a counterparty governed by, or sitting in, another legal system, I work alongside local counsel and coordinate the enquiry centrally.
Cyprus
Company and land records, beneficial-ownership data, and direct legal follow-through into the contract or appointment.
Europe & the UK
Counterparty and corporate checks across the EU and the UK, coordinated with local contacts and counsel.
Eastern Mediterranean & MENA
The partner's regional strength, for markets where the public record gives little and local knowledge gives most.
International by referral
Wider jurisdictions through the partner's correspondents and local attorneys.
Questions
Common questions
What is the difference between this and a standard KYC check?
A standard check confirms identity and the public record. This goes further where it matters, to who really controls a company, where the money came from, and what reputation and history sit behind the presentation. How far it goes depends on what is at stake.
Can you look into a company or person before I sign?
Yes. That is the point of the work, to know who and what you are dealing with while you can still set terms, change the price, or decline. The enquiry is scoped to your decision and agreed before it begins.
What do I actually receive?
A report written for your decision: who and what was found, what it means for the transaction or the appointment, and a recommendation. Not a database printout for you to interpret.
How does this help me close the legal work?
Because the lawyer who reads the findings is the one who can act on them. What the enquiry reveals goes straight into the agreement, as a warranty, a condition or a change in terms, and into the advice on whether to proceed.
What if the other side is abroad?
Cross-border enquiry runs through the partner's correspondents and, where a foreign legal system governs the deal, alongside local counsel, coordinated through my office.
Will the other side know?
No. The work is discreet by nature. The enquiry is conducted without alerting its subject, and the matter is held in confidence.
Speak to me in confidence
Tell me who you are about to deal with, and why it matters
A short, confidential consultation is enough for me to tell you whether a due-diligence enquiry is the right step, what it would involve, and the decision it could support. There is no obligation to proceed.